


Wings

by apparitionism



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels, Bering and Wells AU Week, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-15
Updated: 2014-06-26
Packaged: 2018-02-04 17:14:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 33,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1786867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apparitionism/pseuds/apparitionism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aka The McCartneiad: involving all manner of celestial beings, an oversufficient amount of reflection on the physiognomy of wings, and way too much attention to John Milton. But also Bering and Wells, so there's that. Written for the previous Bering and Wells AU week on tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I basically just wanted to use the word “thronoi.” And then some twelve-part AU thing happened.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a bored angel is a dangerous angel.

There were only so many wing-extension calisthenics one could do, after all; only so many mortals one could awe with an unexpected unfurling. Exhaustion was the inevitable end result of explaining, over and over, “No, I am not the lord your god, nor am I of the seraphim or cherubim; I am a dominion, it’s quite a different thing, actually, although you are of course welcome to remain on your knees.”

And so Helena sat on an ornate throne in the heavens, dangling her right leg over one of its arms, idly stretching and retracting her left wing. Her right was pressed behind her in smaller form, its feathers sleeked and compressed to near invisibility.

“What, may I ask, are you doing?” thundered Mrs. Frederic, the thronos whose symbolic furniture Helena had appropriated. Mrs. Frederic rotated her exterior wheel around her interior one furiously, her hundreds of eyes blinking, staring, winking, glaring at Helena.

“Just keeping it warm for you. I am also wishing,” Helena said, continuing to offer and withdraw her wing, “that this bureaucracy did not run _quite_ so smoothly. Middle-managing the divine government is enervating.”

“Everyone else seems perfectly fine with it. Why are you always the one who gives me trouble?”

“I’m too good at my job?” Helena posited. “The work simply fails to hold my interest. There are no puzzles to solve.”

“Well, let’s see if we might remedy that, if only for my own peace of mind. I have a mission for you.”

Helena’s posture straightened slightly. “A mission?” Then she slumped back down. “It involves mortals, doesn’t it. They’re so… predictable. Overwhelmed by radiant beauty and means of heavenly propulsion. Motivated by lust or greed or some other of the deadlies, singly or in combination.”

“You’re quite sure of yourself, and of them,” Mrs. Frederic said, more enigmatically than descriptively—though, to be fair, thronoi could not but create mystery.

Helena raised her eyebrows slightly. “That is fine, coming from one who dwells in surest power.”

Mrs. Frederic rotated in what appeared to be grinding frustration. “In any event, I will now task you: you are to descend to Earth. A group of mortals is attempting to write a history of the war in heaven, and they seem to have access to… how shall I say this… inside information. And I doubt such information is being obtained from any of us.”

“Not this again,” Helena groaned. “You don’t believe this is going to amount to anything, do you? The war is over; it will not begin again.”

“Who among us can say? We may be divine, but the future remains the future.”

“You are giving me a headache,” Helena said theatrically.

“You can’t get headaches. I, on the other hand, am developing a migraine. Go now. Find these mortals: Arthur Nielsen, Myka Bering, Peter Lattimer. More importantly, find their source. Put a stop to whatever is happening.”

“Fine,” Helena sighed. She arose and shook her wings to loosen them.

“No,” Mrs. Frederic objected, “not like that. You have made your nature known to far too many mortals lately. Undercover. Challenge yourself.”

“It is no challenge,” Helena said, head high. She stood and tensed her shoulders; her wings shimmered, diminished. When she turned her back to Mrs. Frederic to stalk away, they were present only as vaguely sensed ideas.

“Take Claudia with you,” Mrs. Frederic called after her. “I have no desire to see the planets fall out of alignment again. We had to stamp out three separate schisms in the wake of your last adventure.”

Helena tossed an insouciant wave over her almost-bare shoulder.


	2. Another Day

“Hey, H.G.?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Seriously, H.G., where are we going?”

“Seriously, Claudia, do not call me that.”

“Ugh. Fine. Okay, lordship, domination, hashmall Helena, where the fresh other place are we going? You don’t have the feathers out, so I’m guessing there’s going to be some mortal interaction of the incognito variety. I’m also guessing that I’m along for the ride because Mrs. Frederic’s still got her spokes in a twist about what happened last time.”

“Oh, as if you were unable to set things right again. And I believe you rather enjoyed the challenge, my little Virtue-in-training.”

“Yeah, see, if they would actually let me do some overseeing once in a while, I guarantee I’d do a better job than those supposedly mighty—uh, I mean, established members of that Choir—running the place. But nooo, it’s always ‘not yet, Claudia; you’re not ready.’ I ask you. And incidentally, why don’t you ever put in a good word for me? You know, upstairs?”

“Upstairs, you say.”

“Um, yeah, H. _G._ ”

“Don’t call me that.”

****

Myka was wheeling her office chair in a slow circle. She pushed herself a few degrees around, digging into the cheap industrial carpet with the toe of her too-worn sneaker, then took a second to gather the strength to push again. She pushed again. She sighed.

“Don’t you have anything to do?” asked Pete, her officemate. “Tell you what, if you’ll quit that, particularly the sighs of ennui, you can have a leftover Oreo from my discussion section.”

“I don’t eat sugar.”

“People think you’re a pathological liar.”

“What?”

“Because you say that, and then you eat that disgusting red candy.”

“It’s the diabetic kind!”

“Making it even more disgusting.”

“But sugar-free!”

“I didn’t say you _are_ a pathological liar.”

“Anyway, I don’t want any Oreos.”

“Maybe you’re a pathological liar after all. Or _maybe_ ,” he crowed, spinning his own chair at what Myka was sure had to be a dizzying speed (and which, she thought, might explain a lot about his usual mental state), “you’re just upset because the kids in _my_ section totally got _into_ the discussion, and the kids in _your_ section thought it was, and I quote, ‘a huge, enormous drag.’”

“Because I didn’t feed them Oreos?”

“Because you were all, ‘Proust wrote x, y, and z because of big thoughts about the universe.’”

“I never said ‘big thoughts about the universe.’”

Pete waved his hands at her. “Whatever woo-woo thoughts. When what’s really important is, Proust wrote x, y, and z because of _cookies_!”

Myka sighed again.

Pete rolled his eyes. “Yeah, and asthma and the war and his mom and you name it, but it’s a way in, you know?”

“It’s not even a cookie. It’s a cake. And why can’t the way in just be… the thing that it is? I mean, the bigness of the thing?”

“People hate bigness. They love cookies.”

His back was to her then, so she threw her teaching copy of _Swann’s Way_ at his head.

****

_To: peter.lattimer@sdsu.edu; myka.bering@sdsu.edu_

_From: arthur.nielsen@sdsu.edu_

_Subject: next week_

_Myka and Pete—_

_First, Pete, please thank your mother again for covering my Masterpieces lectures this week. I’ve always admired her work on Proust, and I’m sure her perspective made your discussion sections that much more interesting for the students._

_Regarding the research, I’m happy to report that the meeting with Prof. MacPherson went well. He had some new information as well as some insights that were eye-opening. I’d rather not share any of this over email, but let’s just say that I think the book is going to raise a lot of questions about things that have seemed very settled for a very long time._

_I’ll be back in the office on Thursday afternoon, and I’ll expect a full report on your progress in my absence._

_Artie_

TBC


	3. Hi Hi Hi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn’t get as far as I wanted to with this part, but the first little chunk of it, for which I beg your indulgence, is sort of an explanation as to why.

Mrs. Frederic summoned Leena initially to deal with the dog. “Please note,” she pronounced, “the shiba inu who has mistakenly ascended into my magnificent presence. If you would be so kind as to see that he finds his way to the appropriate nirvana.”

Leena said, “So this is where Kabuki went. They were expecting him in the Grassy Meadow Filled With Slow, Dull-Witted Mousies (And Many Of The Finest Cheeses) ages ago.”

“Well,” Mrs. Frederic intoned, “he has passed an apparently pleasant period jumping through my wheels. Entertainingly, but still.”

Leena smiled. “Do it one more time,” she prompted the shiba, who obliged, occasioning a great exhalation and hundreds of eyerolls from Mrs. Frederic. Leena laughed, and he dropped to his stomach, batting his front legs on the ground in invitation. “Not now,” Leena said, “but I promise I’ll come visit you, and we can play then.” She felt a tear droplet form in one of her perfectly shaped eyes. “Oh, how they miss you,” she told him, and his head drooped slightly. “But you taught them so many things.” He smiled. Leena inhaled, then sang one clear note; he let out a sharp yelp in response and teleported away.

“Thank you,” Mrs. Frederic thundered. “Charming creature. However.”

“Is there anything else you need?” Leena asked.

Mrs. Frederic revolved contemplatively. “Yes, I do need something else. I need you to keep watch over an action that one of us is now conducting.”

“Helena again,” Leena hazarded, and as Mrs. Frederic spun in an affirmative direction, “who else would it be?”

“She is… I hesitate, for obvious reasons, to define her as ‘a problem,’ but she is certainly a challenge.”

“Perhaps she’s a test,” said Leena.

“Let us see, then, that we pass.”

****

The second week of her first semester of grad school, Myka broke her arm. In three places. Pete loved to tell the story: “I’d just met her, and I said I didn’t really think she had mad swordfighting skillz, and she tried to show me some crazy move with a spin and a flick or whatever, and the floor was slippery and she went _flying_! Remember, Mykes?”

Myka remembered. Sort of. When Myka got to grad school, she’d thought she understood school. She’d also thought she understood pain. But as she set out on her carefully plotted path to an advanced degree in literature, what she learned first was that she knew nothing about either of those things. 

The doctor at the health service told her she shouldn’t go to class, that he would write her a note. A note! Because you could totally be excused from grad school. Instead, each of her seminars floated by her medicated brain, because what she learned about pain was that you did in fact desperately need to stay ahead of it—get thee behind me, pain!—and that breaking your arm in three places meant that no matter how delightful Pete thought your cast was, and no matter how carefully you moved, you were going to be in more pain than you thought possible, at least for the first three days.

Those three days were still a blur for Myka. Something else she learned was that pharmaceuticals could make her memory stop working. Getting drunk did nothing to it, but being high was a different story. She felt like she was drifting, most of the time, hovering just an inch or two above the normal world. She wondered if anyone else could even see her. They could apparently hear her, though; Pete told her later that she’d said “some crazy things and some maybe genius things?” in their Research Methods class. She had no memory of saying a word in Foundations of Criticism, taught by the famous, and famously testy, Artie Nielsen, but Artie referred to “Myka’s passage” in Milton’s Areopagitica so many times that semester that Myka supposed she’d said something crazy and maybe genius there too.

When she was herself again, she read the Areopagitica through twice, trying to figure out what her strangely reshaped brain could possibly have latched onto. Nothing at all made itself apparent; she’d never even liked Milton that much anyway. But a year later, Artie said, “A year ago, I knew you’d be perfect for this project! Your Areopagitica passage!”

So, really, Pete was responsible for all of it.

****

It was not, all things considered, a particularly hard landing. The _thump_ was barely audible. Nevertheless: “I dislike falling,” Helena complained.

“It isn’t the fall that kills you; it’s the sudden stop,” Claudia intoned, in a passable imitation of Mrs. Frederic. “Or so the mortals say.”

“How many times, exactly, have you said that to me?”

“I’m not an obsessive counter of things. But: eleventy-seven?”

Helena was silent. She contemplated the grass on which they had landed. The blades were lovely and distinct; they smelled new-mown.

“Am I close? Did I Price-Is-Right it?”

Helena sat up, then stood up. She held her hand out to Claudia, she of the strange references, now adorned in what Helena could only conclude was some semblance of young-mortal attire… “How do you happen upon such aspects?” she asked.

“I take the time, H.G. Someday soon, that fancy leather coat of yours is gonna go out of style, and then where will you be? Remember when you had to give up the cloak? Not so many people falling on their knees when they’re wondering what century you fell out of, grandma.”

Helena would have flicked a wing at her; she resorted instead to an eyebrow quirk. “Let us see what our quarry think of our respective getups, shall we?” She breathed, settling her wing-ideals even further within. Then she blinked, hard.

Instantly, Helena and Claudia were surrounded by earthly denizens, young people coming and going, laughing and shouting, passing things of all variety from one to another. “I love mortals,” Claudia sighed. “They’re so… alive.”

“Yes,” Helena said, “charming creatures.” She grabbed the elbow of one of them as he ambled by. “Young man,” she said, lamenting the need to muster wingless authority, “where might we find the Literature Building?”

The young man’s eyes widened at Helena; then he looked at Claudia and smiled. “Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” Claudia said back. “Don’t mind my… professor. She can be kind of bossy. She’s… ah… got an appointment. Sort of. To find out some stuff. That she needs for… research”

“I can show you where Lit is,” the boy said. His gaze, Helena noted, was quite direct, and he seemed immediately taken with Claudia. Both were points in his favor. “I’m Steve, by the way.”

“I’m Claudia. And this is H.G.”

“My name,” Helena decreed, “is Helena.”

“She does sound a little bossy,” Steve said to Claudia.

“It’s mostly for show,” Claudia told him in a loud whisper. “She’s actually pretty cool.”

“I believe you,” Steve said. “C’mon, Lit’s this way.”

“And this is how you keep the planets aligned,” Claudia murmured to Helena. To the grimace she received, she responded with a grin. “Just saying, H.G.”

“Don’t call me that.”

PREVIEW OF COMING ATTRACTIONS:

Pete, Claudia, and Steve found themselves inclined, much later, to discuss forming a gang (of three) called The Witnesses. They would get matching T-shirts, they decided, that read “I survived Hurricane Their First Meeting.”

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original part 3 tumblr tag: buki ascended


	4. Let ’Em In

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It occurs to me that I should disclaimer this whole deal, so: I am monkeying with some religious orthodoxies here. If that is not your thing, then you might ought to give this a pass. (However, if that was not already clear from the fact that I consider my dog a bodhisattva who has now ascended, then I don’t know what to tell you.) Anyway, things are going to deviate. Enjoy!

Artie Nielsen did nothing, _nothing_ by halves. Anything worth doing was worth doing all of, worth spending all one’s time on. So he fidgeted in his seat on the plane, thankful that it was _finally_ the one that would put him on the ground in South Dakota, because there was nothing for him to do until he got back to his office on campus. At long last he could then start looking at the manuscripts in light of the new information. He could tell Myka and Pete what he’d discovered, what he thought it meant; and from now on, as far as he was concerned, _they_ could be the ones who went out and retrieved the objects and documents that would move the project along. It would certainly be a better use of Pete’s talents, which, while they were many, did not include close analysis of biblically inspired texts.

“I think Pete will be a real help to you,” Jane Lattimer had told Artie, nearly a year ago. She had come to South Dakota, as she often did, to visit her son and deliver a lecture, not necessarily in that order of priority.

Artie, who owed her a favor, could only sputter, “All he cares about is sports!”

“Sports in literature,” Jane said mildly. “Well, sports in general, yes, but also, sports in literature. And then there’s his work on graphic novels.”

“Comic books,” Artie said.

“It was a very good paper,” Jane reminded him.

Artie sighed. “Yes, it was. But I really need someone who…” She was giving him a stern look. He’d seen her give that same look to students, to other faculty, and certainly to her son. “Oh, all right. He and Myka already know each other, at least. They should be able to work together.”

“I think you all will make a delightful team. And I suspect you’ll find Pete quite a help when it comes to teaching.”

Sure enough, Jane had been right. While Pete _cared_ more about _The Blind Side_ than he did about the blind poet, he certainly knew his stuff. Better, he could convey that stuff to students better than almost anyone Artie had ever seen. Even Myka, who was clearly brilliant, couldn’t access the same pipeline into post-adolescent brains.

They made a very good team. Artie just knew they were close to a breakthrough, and he couldn’t wait to get home and refocus their efforts based on what MacPherson, his former colleague, had told him. Why James was willing to help—and he’d helped out with several knotty problems over the last few months—was a question for another day; if James was willing to leave the past in the past, Artie could do the same. And if putting his own past behind him could help Artie shine some light on the far more distant past, well, so much the better.

“Do you need anything, sir?” a voice asked, startling him.

“A time machine,” Artie sighed, then looked up at the flight attendant. “Failing that, how about a diet Coke?”

****

“This place is pretty dark,” Claudia commented as they climbed the seemingly endless stairs, “and big.” She could feel Helena rolling her eyes at the idea of darkness or bigness being achievable by mortals.

“I think it’s to make undergrads feel small and insignificant,” Steve said. “You know, compared to the glory of literature. It works on me sometimes. Is it working on you?”

Helena snorted. She muttered something about pretension and architecture. Claudia said, “I’m not listening to you, H.G., and I’m recommending that Steve do the same.”

“Anyway,” Steve said hurriedly, “like I told you, Artie’s not here this week, but Pete and Myka’s office is up on the fifth floor. Just another couple flights to go.”

“Flights,” Helena said. She was clearly losing interest in the task already.

Claudia knew perfectly well how _that_ was likely to end up. “Don’t get any ideas,” she cautioned. “And _really_ not about flight.”

“As if this place could inspire _ideas_ ,” Helena said. She tossed her head, as if preparing to lecture on where ideas really came from.

“Hey!” Steve exclaimed. “We’re here! Well, practically. Up these steps, around the corner… and oh thank god, their light’s on.”

A soft glow emanated from the outline of the closed door. Claudia saw Helena lean toward it slightly, as if drawn; she filed the image away for future reference.

“You’re gonna love Pete,” Steve assured them. “He’s great. I’m in his section of Masterpieces. I mean, you might love Myka, too, but I don’t know her all that well. She seems a little—”

“Your service has been appreciated,” Helena said. She cast her arm out and flung the office door open. It slammed against the wall; the light, now harsh, flooded the hall.

“Hey!” exclaimed two voices—one female, a bit hushed, and one male, clearly still somewhat in the throes of sleep.

****

Pete sat up and wiped at his mouth. No drool; maybe he’d only been asleep for a few minutes. He looked first at Myka, who was peering at the door and squinting, as if something hurt her eyes. Then he looked at the doorway. It framed a really, really beautiful woman who was at the same time the most terrifying thing he’d ever seen. Next to her was a smaller, red-haired (but blue-striped) girl.

The scary lady spoke first. “You are engaged in… let us kindly call it a research project, shall we?… regarding the War in Heaven. Tell me the source of your information.”

“Pardon me,” Myka said. The squinting was over, and Pete could almost _see_ her hackles going up. If she had hackles. Whatever hackles were.

“No,” the scary lady responded. “I have made a request. I await your response.”

It was Pete’s turn to squint. “Who _are_ you?” he said. Then he noticed Steve Jinks, from his Masterpieces section, standing behind the girl. “Hey, man, what’s up? Who’re your… friends?” Pete liked Steve—he was willing to talk in class, and he was smart enough, and just enough of a wise-ass, to be interesting.

“We are not his friends,” the scary lady said, overriding Steve’s attempt to speak. She didn’t even look at Pete.

“I’m Claudia,” the blue-striped girl piped up.

“Hi, Claudia,” Pete said. Myka and the scary lady were having a staring contest, best he could figure, so he went on, “So, you know Steve?”

“Only since a little while ago,” Claudia said. “But he says you’re great.”

“It’s true,” Pete said. “I’m pretty great.” He grinned.

Claudia smiled back.

Meanwhile, the scary lady was asking Myka again, “From where, from _whom_ , does your information come?”

Claudia lightly whacked the lady in the arm and said, “Come on, H.G., you could be a little nicer about it.”

The scary lady—H.G.—rounded on Claudia and snarled, “Don’t call me that!”

“Hey!” Pete and Steve said at the same time.

Claudia made a face. “It’s cool, guys, I’m used to it.”

“You shouldn’t have to be,” Steve said.

“Yeah,” Pete agreed.

H.G. sighed. “Oh, for the love of… just give me what I seek, and I will be on my way. I have no desire to spend any more time than necessary in this transaction.”

“In that case,” Myka said. She had an expression on her face that Pete knew really, really well. She got it when anybody tried to pull rank on her; he remembered a time when a student was all “Do you know who my father is?” and Myka went all quiet and set her jaw just like this and Pete never wanted to be anywhere near that kind of situation ever again.

“In that case,” Pete said, “we could just tell you about—”

Myka interrupted, “No we could not, because it is not our call. It’s Artie’s work, and he’s not here. So I’m sorry, H.G. or whatever your name is, you’re going to have to come back some other time and talk to him instead. We can’t help you.”

“Are you _simple_?” H.G. snapped. “It is of no concern to me whose work it is. I asked you a question, and I expect an answer.”

“Well, you’re not getting one from me,” Myka retorted.

“Believe me, I will get my answer, or you will—”

“Hey!” Pete said again, “don’t threaten Myka, scary lady, because—”

Myka whipped her head around to him. “I can take care of _myself_ , Pete.”

The scary lady, H.G., said, “Oh, really? You think so? Try taking care of yourself when the maws of Darius’s lions are at the ready and see how you do.”

“What?” said Pete, Steve, and Myka.

Claudia said, “This is really not the best way to go about asking people for their help.”

Myka agreed, acidly, “It’s really not.”

“Oh, ‘it’s really not’?” the scary lady mimicked.

Pete could have told her that that was not going to go over with Myka, and sure enough, Myka stood up and took one step, then two steps, toward H.G., saying, “No, it’s not. If you want to make an appointment to speak with Artie, that’s fine, but I think you should leave now.”

“Leave?” H.G. echoed. Then she laughed. It made Pete want to buy earplugs and headphones and a hoodie and hide in a soundproofed cave, but she kept talking: “Leave… oh, no; apparently, little girl, you wish to _reap the whirlwind_ —” and Pete could have sworn her _eyes_ started to _glow_ like she was Cate Blanchett in Lord of the Rings or something, and—

Claudia started actively pulling on the scary lady’s arm now, saying, “Ixnay, ixnay, no whirlwinds, because I think Mrs. F would really not be down with that because it kind of means you would show people things you really really _really_ need not to because I’m pretty sure you were told—”

Suddenly, from just outside the doorway: “What is going ON here?” Everybody turned and looked—everybody, including scary-lady H.G. An amazingly gorgeous other lady was there. “Helena, are you _losing your temper_?”

Claudia yelped, “Leena!” and leapt over to hug her, while H.G., Helena, scary lady, said, “Losing my temper? Oh, I assure you, this petty creature will know when I _lose my temper_ with her!”

Leena, the amazingly gorgeous other lady, just blinked. Pete watched as scary lady, H.G., Helena just sort of… subsided.

Pete said to Leena, “I don’t know who you are, but you remind me a lot of my mom.” He considered for a second, then turned to the scary lady. “Actually, you both kind of remind me of my mom. Are you guys department chairs?”

TBC


	5. Jet

Steve was seeking. What exactly he was looking for, he had no idea, but he knew he’d been looking all his life… he’d hoped that college would give him answers, but instead it was just more questions. Bigger questions. They didn’t seem to get him any closer to whatever truth he was trying to find, whatever _peace_ he was still hoping would be out there waiting for him.

When he’d realized he was gay, back in high school, he’d thought, _Aha! That’s it!_ But no. It didn’t change his life at all, really; it turned out that he was still the same Steve who didn’t go out with anyone, except now he was Steve who didn’t go out with boys instead of Steve who didn’t go out with girls. Which was fine. If there had been someone in particular he yearned for, that would have been one thing. But even that kind of certainty eluded him.

And all that played into why Steve was so surprised by how he responded to the two women on the quad that fateful afternoon. The older one grabbed his arm, but he was trying to gather the courage to talk to them anyway, because the first thing he’d thought when he saw them was, “They’re real.”

Of course he had no idea what that meant, either, but trying to figure out the reason behind a very specific thought felt like a far more reasonable thing to do than puzzling over what questions he should be asking the universe. Greater likelihood of success, anyway.

They _were_ real, these two, and they talked to Steve in ways he felt like he remembered. Not to say that Helena wasn’t terrifying, (or something like that; he couldn’t get the word quite right), and not to say that there wasn’t something a little off about Claudia too. But they made him feel like something was at last _happening_ , and that feeling was only intensified when they asked him about Artie, Pete, and Myka. He’d taken the Masterpieces class as part of his search for answers, but he’d had no idea that the class would itself be an answer.

Or maybe, he thought, watching helplessly as Helena swept into Pete and Myka’s office, it was something he should never have gotten involved with in the first place.

Because while Myka wasn’t even his TA, she seemed nice enough, and she was really really smart, and who was this Helena person to come in and talk to her like that anyway? And then Helena seemed like she was going to _detonate_ , and Steve started thinking that maybe everything would be a whole lot better if Myka just told her whatever the deal was with Artie’s work, because how important could it be? Although if Helena wanted to know that bad, maybe it was… but anyway, if they were going to play _Clash of the Titans_ it was all well and good, and if Steve hadn’t been mesmerized by the whole thing, he might have been trying to sneak off. Or make himself small and unnoticeable in the way that he knew he was good at.

But he was watching; he couldn’t explain to his eyes that it might be good to look away. And for some reason, watching made him part of it… all the more so when Helena briefly caught his gaze as she whipped around to look at the new arrival, Leena, whose arm Claudia was clutching, in joy or possibly relief.

What surprised him, then, was his boldness; he said to Claudia, “I don’t know what’s happening.”

Leena looked at Steve for the first time. “I like a person who can admit that.” Steve liked the sound of her voice.

“Really?” Pete said, perking up. “Because I’m with Steve. I don’t have the first clue.”

Helena muttered, “Apparently not.”

“Hey!” Myka said, “Pete has plenty of clues!” She paused. “Okay, maybe he doesn’t always put them together to solve the case, as it were, but—”

“Way to throw me under the bus, there, officemate-o’-mine. And here I thought we had each other’s backs.”

“We do! All I meant was—”

Helena said, “You meant that your gentleman friend is not quick.”

Steve thought Helena had said that in a kind of weirdly helpful way, but it set Myka off again: “Don’t tell me what I meant! You can’t just come in here and start ordering people around and telling them what things _mean_!”

Helena said, “In fact, I can and have. I begin to think that you are less quick, even, than your gentleman friend.”

“Really? You ‘begin to think’? When did that start, exactly?”

Pete said, “Uh, Myka, maybe not so much with the antagonizing of the lady we don’t know?”

“I know everything I need to know about her,” Myka said, and Steve watched Helena’s eyes narrow.

Claudia jumped in with, “That’s maybe not true. It might possibly be the case that we all need to know a little more about each other before we get all dismissive of people and their concerns. I’ll go first, with something simple: I wish I had a dog.”

That seemed to bring both Helena and Leena up short. “What?” they said in unison.

“Seriously. People spend a lot of time with dogs, and they really seem to like it. I think it would be cool to sort of experience that.”

Leena said, “There are plenty of places where you could experience dogs.”

“Yeah, but they aren’t _my_ dogs; those are actual people’s dogs. It seems like a really different thing to have a dog that’s yours. I don’t know what it means.”

Steve tried to picture Claudia with a dog. It wasn’t working. “I see you more with… a horse?” he said, and when he thought about that some more, it really seemed right. Claudia on a horse, in armor, with a spear, or a lance, or… wait, what? Where had that image come from?

“Um,” said Claudia. “Oops.”

“Yes,” said Leena, severely.

Helena looked smug.

Steve said weakly, “I just like horses? Because they’re cool?” He didn’t know what he’d done wrong, what Claudia had done wrong, or what he could possibly do to salvage the situation.

“Horses are delightful,” Helena pronounced.

“I hate horses,” Myka said, and Helena shot her a look and a smirk. She might as well have had a thought bubble over her head that read “gotcha.”

Artie chose that moment to appear in the hallway, right behind Steve. “Who are all these people?” he asked. “What do they want?”

“Well,” Pete said, “there’s me and Myka, of course, and that’s Helena, and Claudia, and Leena. And you know Steve from class. Claudia wants a dog; Steve wants a pony, so he thinks she’d be better off with one too; Helena wants Myka to tell her what we know about Satan and all that business; and Myka wants Helena to go do something that I’ve always heard is anatomically impossible. Leena wants everybody to chill, and me? I second that emotion. I’d also like some dinner. I think that about covers it. So what’s up with you, boss man?”

Steve thought for a second that nobody could possibly look as perplexed as Artie did right then. He had a feeling, though, that if he himself had looked in a mirror, he might have revised that opinion.

TBC


	6. Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey

_Part 6a: Uncle Albert_

To Myka’s surprise, the demands of Pete’s stomach carried the day: they went to dinner together. All of them. At a place known not for its elegant cuisine, but for burritos the size of your forearm; their Thai burrito was Pete’s absolute favorite thing _ever_. Except when his favorite thing _ever_ was Hawaiian pizza at the tiny joint three streets over, “because they put papaya on it!” Myka had been extremely skeptical, but it turned out to be a strangely palatable-in-limited-doses combination of disgusting and fantastic… not unlike Pete himself.

To Myka’s lack of surprise, Pete talked Artie, Helena, Claudia, and Leena into getting variations on that Thai burrito. Steve ordered, a little apologetically, “just the lentil bowl.” If Myka were Pete, she would have high-fived him; as it was, she settled for a soft “me too.”

Once the food arrived, Myka found herself between three conversations, not a part of any of them, hearing random phrases from each.

“No, no,” Artie said to Helena, “it’s that there are hints of another figure, or another several, involved.”

Claudia guffawed at something Leena whispered to her, then choked out, still laughing, “Through her _wheels_?”

“Football isn’t just a _metaphor_ for life, Steve,” Pete said sagely.

Myka had somehow been seated to Helena’s right. She hadn’t wanted to be anywhere near the infuriating woman, but there had been tables dragged together and chairs shuffled around and repetitions of “scoot down one seat” and so here she was. Helena had her head turned toward Artie on her left, which left Myka staring at her hair… wait, no, she was emphatically _not_ staring at her hair. She was just trying to find something to look at, and, well, there her hair _was_ , and it looked so _glossy_ , as if it were made of some kind of otherworldly filaments. Why was Artie telling her about their stuff, anyway? His stuff, that was. His stuff. And it was probably because he wanted to talk about it to someone who really cared…

But Myka really cared, too; she thought it was all more than intriguing, the idea that Milton and the others who had written about this war had been suppressing, or not quite suppressing, parts of other, earlier accounts. And wasn’t that always the way, with literature, with history? What made its way down, made its way through, had been pared down, sculpted into shapes useful for certain purposes… but what happened to the pieces that were left over?

Myka heard Helena say to Artie, “I find it somewhat odd that no one has engaged in such a project before now.” Helena tossed her head a bit, punctuating her words, and the shaken strands of her hair rustled themselves alarming close to Myka’s face. They smelled like… all the perfumes? Well, that couldn’t be right. Puzzled, Myka leaned a bit closer. At that exact moment, Helena raised her arm, as if she were about to take an oath—but just as her hand was about to collide with Myka’s face, Helena rotated her body toward Myka smoothly, easily, turning the incipient crash into something like a caress.

Did Myka swoon? She would remember, after, feeling momentarily lightheaded, abnormally sluggish, as Helena’s eyes met hers. Afterward, she would tell herself that it was only that nobody had actually touched her in a very long time… maybe Pete had fist-bumped her a month or so ago after a marathon session of grading papers?… it had to be that, not the smell of Helena’s hair and the velvet of her skin and that uncanny intensity in her eyes and the way Myka could swear she heard some sort of susurration, some hushed undercurrent, whenever Helena moved. But that had to be her imagination.

So no, she didn’t swoon, because Myka Bering certainly _did not swoon_. But an instant later, when Helena turned back to Artie and everything snapped back into something like reality, Myka knew that business was not as usual.

She turned to her right and said “Pete” far more weakly than she’d intended.

She caught his attention, at least. “Here’s the thing, Myka: Steve has a weird relationship with football… whoa, are you okay? You look like you ought to shovel down some of those lentils that you’ve eaten exactly none of. Or a couple Oreos, you know?”

“I don’t eat sugar,” Myka said. It was a reflex. It made her feel a little more normal.

“You don’t eat _sugar_?” Claudia said from across the table. “Myka, you are missing out. That stuff is awesome. And you people put it in practically everything!”

“What’s with the ‘you people’? Where are you from, anyway?” Steve asked Claudia.

Claudia looked at Leena, then at Steve. “A place,” she said. “One that’s… not this place.” She sat back. She seemed pleased with herself.

Steve said, “Thank you. That’s very informative.”

“No, come on, Steve,” Claudia said. “I just… don’t really like to talk about it. Well, actually, I do like to talk about it. I’m just not technically _allowed_ to talk about it.”

Leena said, “Claudia…”

Steve said, “It’s okay, Claudia. I’m sorry. Leena, I don’t want her to get in trouble.”

Myka was starting to really like Steve.

The other conversation caught Myka’s ear again, as Helena said, “I advise you to attend to my request.” She was starting to get that tone back in her voice, the one she’d used when she first talked to Myka—no, she hadn’t _talked_ to Myka at all; she’d given Myka an order.

Artie responded to it about as well as Myka had. He ground out, “What makes you think I couldn’t have figured out the connections myself?”

Helena sighed. “I am casting no aspersions on you. I just wish to know if there is someone else who might have information of this sort.”

Artie asked what Myka hadn’t quite got around to: “Why?”

Helena, clearly taken aback, parroted, “Why? Because I have an interest in it.”

Artie said, “But this is my project. This could put me back on the map!”

Helena said, “And you are at present off the map?”

Now Artie’s body language was hostile. He leaned toward Helena. “I’ll have you know, there was a time when I was a pretty big deal. My work on several Russian authors was considered authoritative!”

“I see. But the situation has changed. And you wish to change it back.”

Artie seemed a bit mollified. “I think everyone wants to feel like they’re making a contribution.”

Helena paused. Then she said, “Do you think that? However, sometimes making contributions leads one not to a position of authority but to one of greater servitude.”

Something in Helena’s voice made Myka forget how awful she was. “Sounds like you’re speaking from experience,” she said softly.

Helena looked directly at Myka. “I found myself at one time in a thematically similar situation with my brother… Charles.”

Claudia gave a shrieky giggle. “Your brother _Charles_?” She clapped a hand over her mouth.

Leena snapped, “Claudia!”

Turning back to Artie, Helena said, “In any case, I simply wish to know your source.”

Artie said, “I still haven’t told you that I have one.”

An obviously frustrated Helena said, “And yet it is clear to me that some such entity exists. I am not questioning your competence, nor that of your young man, nor of your girl.”

Myka remembered how awful she was. “Don’t call me ‘girl’!”

Helena tossed over her shoulder, disingenuously, “Are you not a girl, then?”

Myka fumed, “What is the _matter_ with you? Were you put here on this earth to mess with me? Is it your _mission_ or something?”

For some reason, Claudia said, “Well…” Leena reached out, without even looking, and backhanded Claudia in the arm. Claudia flailed and knocked over a salt shaker; as if choreographed, Helena, Leena, and Claudia, in that order, each reached for a pinch of spilled salt and tossed it over her left shoulder.

Artie shook his head at this display, then gave Myka a sympathetic look. He said, “The thing is, I am the one with the information here. And I’m starting to think that I’m going to need leverage, so I’m going to keep my cards right up against my vest.”

Helena squinted at him.

Artie sighed. “I’m not telling you anything. I don’t trust you. And I’m tired now, so I’m going home.”

Helena said, “I will call on you again tomorrow; you may depend upon it.” It was without question a threat.

Artie sat up straighter. “Be that as it may. In the meantime, Myka, Pete, she gets nothing from you. Nothing. Got it?”

Myka said, “I have no problem with that.”

Pete said, “You’re the boss, boss.”

That effectively broke up the party, such as it was. As they moved from the restaurant to the outdoors, Artie stomped ostentatiously and Pete overexplained something about the gym being open early for pickup basketball games before classes the next morning. Steve scooted away, pleaded an essay he had to get started on, but Myka said nothing. She hung back in the doorway, unsure of what she was waiting for. The other three women seemed to gather together, almost in a flock, before making their way down the sidewalk.

Myka eavesdropped on them as they walked away.

“Your brother Charles?” Claudia said, just as she’d done earlier. “Your brother _Charles_? You better hope he doesn’t hear about this; you know how picky he can get about his name, H.G.”

“Don’t call me that. And what, exactly, is he going to do to me?”

“It isn’t what he’s going to do to _you_ that I care about. Remember, just because _you_ don’t want to go all in with the family business doesn’t mean that the rest of us can just cash in our chips and go home, okay?”

Myka wondered what was wrong with the name “Charles.” Maybe he went by “Chuck”?

Leena said, “Claudia, you need to be more careful. Also, Helena, you have to stop doing whatever you’re doing to that poor girl.”

Myka realized that Leena meant her, Myka. Her heart dropped, stopped.

Helena said, “I am not doing anything to her. Additionally, she does not wish to be called a girl.”

Myka’s heart stuttered, started back up. She felt… exhilarated. Also exhausted. She shook her head and went home to get some sleep.

****

Myka was not often up at five in the morning; long nights of reading, note-taking, and writing saw to that. But she found herself moody, restless, too warm in her bed, so she decided to go for a run. Her running shoes were stiff: a clear sign that she’d been neglecting her body. As she set off at a light jog, she resolved to be more disciplined about exercise. If she could force herself to sit down and read when she needed to, she could certainly do this regularly too. The body was just as important as the mind. _Terribly profound_ , someone’s voice said in her head. She ignored it.

She decided to run to Dakota Park, a tiny green space adjacent to Dakota Elementary School—small-town South Dakota’s complete lack of creativity was really very sweet—which would give her about two miles each way. She encountered absolutely no one as she ran. She was surprised to see little huffs of vapor when she exhaled; she’d been overheated in her pajamas, and that even with a window open.

But why was she focusing on the temperature, when she had far larger concerns and four miles’ worth of run to think on them? Well, she figured, that was because the concerns weren’t really hers at all, were they? It was Artie’s project, his life’s work, and whatever power struggle he and Helena were engaged in was their struggle, not Myka’s. Myka was perfectly happy, in fact, to be on the outside of that, because it meant she wouldn’t have to decide whose side to take.

Wait, what? How could she possibly be conflicted about which side she would be on? Artie, her advisor, the man who held her academic fate in his hands, who was teaching her how to read and understand and appreciate… versus Helena, who was who exactly? She’d swept in, making demands, acting like she owned not only the world, _this_ world, but the entire universe, acting like she owned _Myka_ , for heaven’s sake, like Myka owed her obedience or something. So no, Myka would never take Helena’s side. Not in anything. Myka was not going to bow to someone who hadn’t proved her worth.

Myka was angry now; her breath came in steady streams, and she knew her face must be red. Running harder, she rounded a corner onto the street that would take her by the school.

She didn’t know why she turned her head toward the park. But she did turn her head, and she saw a flash of red through the trees, then several flickers of black. She felt… compelled, almost, to slow down and stop. She walked as quietly as she could down the dirt path in the direction of the movements; she knew the trees opened onto a small sward, and she didn’t want to startle anyone there, certainly not at this hour, if she could help it.

Myka was the one startled.

In the clearing, she saw Claudia, Leena, and Helena, all clad in black, form-fitting attire, all facing the rising sun, all performing what seemed to Myka’s eyes to be a strange fusion of yoga, tai chi, and ballet. Helena was clearly leading the other two, but they all obviously knew the positions and their sequence, for they flowed from one pose to the next with no hesitation, and with such beauty and grace that Myka was overcome with emotion.

She noticed, a few beats later, that she was not the only one.

Steve stood several yards away from her, focused intently on the women on the grass, copying their movements as best he could. He had clearly been crying.

Myka left the path and picked her way, tree to tree, toward him. “Steve,” she said softly.

He was standing on one foot; he lost his concentration and almost tumbled over. “Myka!” he said in an anguished whisper. “What are you doing here?”

“I was out for a run, and I saw them. What… do you know what they’re doing?”

“No idea,” he said, “but isn’t it beautiful?”

Myka turned her head back to the women, felt tears start to gather in her own eyes. She voiced the thought that came to her: “It’s the truth.”

****

Myka’s Areopagitica passage:

We boast our light; but if we look not wisely on the sun itself, it smites us into darkness. …The light which we have gained was given us, not to be ever staring on, but by it to discover onward things more remote from our knowledge. …They are the troublers, they are the dividers of unity, who neglect and permit not others to unite those dissevered pieces which are yet wanting to the body of Truth. To be still searching what we know not by what we know, still closing up truth to truth as we find it (for all her body is homogeneal and proportional), this is the golden rule in theology as well as in arithmetic, and makes up the best harmony in a Church; not the forced and outward union of cold, and neutral, and inwardly divided minds.

[Author’s note: I find that it’s far easier to process Milton’s prose if one adds “motherf—ers” or “you dumbasses” (or your epithet of choice) at the end of each sentence—particularly the Areop., since he’s so angry. I am not joking. Read the thing out loud and you’ll see what I mean.]

********

_Part 6b: Admiral Halsey_

Myka and Steve stood somewhat uneasily together on the sidewalk in front of Dakota Elementary School. Myka knew they should get farther away from the park before the women emerged and saw them, but Steve still seemed overwhelmed, and she didn’t want to just take off and leave him. “Do you want to get a coffee or something?” she asked him.

“Oh,” he said. “Myka, I think you’re great, but I’m gay.”

Myka was genuinely puzzled for a second. “Good for you?” she hazarded. Maybe he’d been so affected by the sight of the women that he’d decided to come out… then she got it. “Oh, god, Steve, no… I just meant that we could maybe process the experience. Because, you know, I think you’re great too, but I’m—”

Steve covered his face with his hands. “Oh my god,” he mumbled, “I’m an idiot. Don’t tell Pete; he’ll fail me. I’ve lost my mind—this whole thing since it started yesterday has just been so, I don’t know, intense?” He rubbed his eyes. “I’d love to.”

When they were at last indoors, fortified with coffee (for Myka) and herbal tea (for Steve, who said he felt about caffeine the way Myka did about sugar), Steve said, “So I have to confess this, or I’ll go crazy: I stalked them.”

“Stalk who?  I mean, whom?”

“Claudia, and Helena and Leena. Because I just had to know more. I mean, they make sense when they’re there in the room with you, right? But then when you try to think about them, it gets weird and fuzzy. Doesn’t it?”

Myka tried concentrating on them. Her mind’s eye had no trouble at all conjuring up Helena, with that hair and those eyes and that _attitude_. For Leena and Claudia, though… she knew what they looked like, of course, and what they’d said yesterday, but she couldn’t remember if she knew anything else about them, or if that was at all important. They weren’t really… it didn’t… “What’s going on?” she asked Steve. “Who _are_ they?”

“See, I don’t know! That’s the point! So last night I followed them, or I tried to follow them. I don’t remember what happened then, but I woke up right outside the park this morning, and there they were.”

Myka didn’t want to be mean, but Steve _was_ an undergraduate… “You didn’t… drink too much? Maybe?”

“I don’t drink,” Steve said. “No drugs, either. I try to keep my mind pretty clear.”

“Sorry.”

“That’s okay. It’s a little out of the ordinary.” They sat in silence for a moment, then Steve went on, “So I have to ask, what’s this big-deal project that Helena wants to know about? Is it really super-secret?”

Yesterday, Myka probably wouldn’t have thought twice about talking about it; today, it certainly felt like it ought to be kept super-secret. But that was ridiculous, wasn’t it? The project wasn’t any different, and Steve was an undergrad. What could it matter? “It’s about the war in Heaven. Artie’s pretty sure it was a bigger thing than in _Paradise Lost_. Or a different thing. Parts were left out. Important players.”

“Like that da Vinci code thing?”

“Well… in the sense that there seems to be some kind of shadow history, then yeah. Not that Milton was writing actual history, so I guess that’s the difference. There just seem to be more ideas he could have included. So what we find out will be interesting in itself, but it’s also going to shed light on Milton’s choices. And the Bible, if you think about the Bible as literature instead of this immutable holy thing. Though if you’re invested in that… I don’t want to upset you.” She sat back and took a sip of coffee. Best to get any concerns out of the way now, before she said any more.

“You won’t upset me,” Steve said. “But I might upset you with this: I don’t know much about Milton.”

“But you’re in the Masterpieces class! You’re doing really _well_ in the Masterpieces class!”

“You guys did Milton in the first part, last term. I had a chem lab on Wednesday mornings. I _wanted_ to take it, I swear.”

He sounded so sincere that Myka wanted to hug him—but given their earlier misunderstanding, he might take that the wrong way. She settled for saying, “That you would even say you wanted to is good enough for me. But I might have to give you some homework if you’re going to stay involved in this whole…. well, whatever this is.”

Steve gave her some pretty impressive puppy-dog eyes. “Please, I’m begging you, no more homework. _Swann’s Way_ was bad enough—I mean, not _bad_ bad, but long and mystifying and couldn’t you basically read just that and nothing else for the rest of your life? I don’t see how Professor Lattimer got past it to the other volumes, honestly, and then to be an expert on all of it? It makes me want to go dunk my head in a bucket. And quit school. It’s just so _big_.”

Myka said, “I think I love you, Steve. In a totally platonic way, of course. I wish you were in my Masterpieces section.”

“Pete’s pretty fun, though,” Steve said. “And funny. Is his mom ever funny like that? She seemed mostly terrifying to me.”

“I’ve only met her a couple of times, but she’s… she’s a very good role model. As a woman in this field.”

“Oh. I figured you’d know her pretty well, on account of you and Pete.”

“Well, it’s not like she hangs out in our office or anything when she’s in town… wait. On account of Pete and I what?”

“Aren’t you guys… you know.”

Myka was afraid she might hyperventilate. “No! Oh my god, please don’t tell me all the kids in class think that.”

“They sort of do, because you guys are always together. You share the office, everybody sees you out at restaurants all the time…”

“That’s because Pete can’t go two hours without a meal!”

“That doesn’t really mean you aren’t together,” Steve pointed out.

“This does: _we are not together_. Okay?”

“It’s fine by me,” Steve said. “But I figured he got roped into this whole thing with Artie—I mean Professor Nielsen—because he was your boyfriend. It doesn’t exactly seem like it would be his thing.”

“It doesn’t, does it,” Myka agreed. “But he’s into the war part of it, angels fighting. In _Paradise Lost_ , the angel Raphael tells Adam about this war in heaven, with swords and cannons and crazy stuff. But the thing is, it’s completely pointless, because the angels can’t die or anything. And Raphael’s already said that Adam’s mortal mind couldn’t understand what really happened, so it’s all a big fakey metaphor, and anyway the whole thing seems like a setup for the Messiah to waltz in at the end and vanquish Satan. Which he was always going to do anyway, and God knew it beforehand—exactly like Adam and Eve, where they have free will but God already knows they won’t be able to resist temptation. So basically everybody’s just going through the motions. You have to wonder, what is Milton really up to? And why is he not up to it out in the open?”

“So you think it’s like the da Vinci code, where Mary Magdalene’s in the painting, supposedly, but there isn’t a big neon arrow pointing at her?”

“Sort of. So we’re looking for neon arrows in other places. Artie has this former colleague, James MacPherson, who’s got access to these privately held manuscripts, and we haven’t figured it all out yet—Artie just got back from seeing him—but there’s something interesting going on.”

Myka was warming to her tale now—so much so, in fact, that she failed to notice a small redhead dashing, one could say almost flying, out of the shop.

****

“Okay, guys, the intel is that somebody named James MacPherson is feeding this Artie whatever his information is. From manuscripts.”

“Manuscripts,” Helena said. “What could possibly be the content of such manuscripts? Where would they have come from? And who, exactly, is this James MacPherson? Why were we not sent to him in the first place?”

Claudia shrugged. “That’s a lot of questions that are a lot above my pay grade. Oh, also: Myka and Pete are absolutely not an item, but Myka thinks she loves Steve.”

“What?” Helena raised her shoulders in exactly the way she did when preparing to extend her wings in indignation.

“Ha, gotcha. It’s totally platonic. But I _knew_ you liked her.”

“I do not _like_ her. As if I had the capacity for such a thing. As if, even if I did, I would choose that defiant little beast.”

Leena sighed, “Oh, Helena. You always end up liking the ones who defy you.”

“Oh, Leena,” Helena mimicked, “you always interpret my actions incorrectly. I merely wish to teach them a lesson.”

Claudia snorted. “Some lesson.”

“You,” Helena said, pointing somewhat awkwardly at Claudia with her right shoulder, “are cordially invited to stifle your instinct to commentary. Now.”

“I think the mortals have a different gesture to go with that kind of cordial invitation.”

****

Myka had exactly forty-eight hours to write a “brief commentary” on a pair of poems: one Elizabeth Bishop and one Mary Oliver. She was hiding in her office, trying to come up with an approach, when her phone rang. It was Pete, who when she picked up, whispered, “Artie’s office, stat.”

“What are you, a secret agent?”

“Kinda, yeah. But seriously.”

Myka sighed. She’d known Artie was going to want to talk to them at some point today, and it wasn’t that she wasn’t interested in knowing what he’d learned from MacPherson, but it also wasn’t like she could put her classes on hold just because he’d found some commentary on some previously unknown angelic figure in some manuscript from some rich guy’s private collection.

She understood Pete’s whispering the minute she reached the faculty hallway, and she slunk up next to where he stood against the wall next to Artie’s door.

Artie was bellowing, “Yesterday you didn’t know, and today you do! Who told you? Was it Pete? Myka?”

Helena’s voice was calm. “Of course not. Your instructions to them, regarding speaking to me, were quite clear, and they do not seem inclined to go against your wishes.”

Something about the way she said “speaking to me” made Myka’s spine go cold.

Artie roared, “I know for a fact it wasn’t me, so it had to be one of them! It was Pete, wasn’t it! Why does he have to be so _friendly_!”

Pete made a face at Myka. “Now he’s got the idea in his head,” he said softly, “and you know how he gets. I’m toast.”

“You’re not toast. I think…” Myka swallowed. “I think I know how this might have happened.”

She took a breath. It wasn’t Pete’s fault, and if Artie was going to lose his mind about something, it might as well be the right thing, or at least the closest version of the right thing Myka could stitch together. Whatever the consequences for her turned out to be.

In the office, Artie was leaning across his desk, red-faced, clearly ready to launch himself at Helena—she was sitting in the facing chair, looking so undisturbed as to be almost bored. But after a second, she turned her head to look at Myka. And she smiled.

That smile was, Myka thought, something like the smell of her hair had been: it was all the smiles, impossible to interpret as friendly or malevolent or carefree or sadistic or joyful. “Hi,” Myka said in response to it.

“Hi,” Helena said back, quietly.

Myka then saw Artie look at the two of them. He said, “Oh my god.”

That seemed to catch Helena’s attention; she rolled her eyes and said, “Not this again—”

But there was no stopping him: “I can’t believe this! Myka, how could you?”

Myka protested, “I didn’t! Not directly, anyway. I was talking to Steve; it seemed like it would be all right, because he’s so serious! So I guess he must have told you.” She directed this at Helena.

Helena said, “I am tempted to simply say yes. However, as you are being honest, I will be as well: Claudia followed the two of you and overheard your conversation. At my direction, so spare her your wrath, Mr. Nielsen, Ms. Bering. Then, as instructed, she reported to me. There. Now you know.”

Myka said, “Thank you for not throwing Steve under the bus.”

Helena leaned forward slightly and cocked her head. “Your friend said something similar yesterday. What is this penchant for people being, or not being, thrown under buses?”

Pete poked his head in the office and said, “Speaking of Steve, it’s like he said last night: you guys aren’t from around here, are you?”

Helena’s expression turned slightly squinty. Myka was coming to recognize that as meaning something like “I don’t know quite how to respond yet, but you will be sorry when I do.”

“It’s just an expression,” Myka said. “All I mean is… thank you.”

Helena inclined her head. Myka felt something like that strange _slowing_ from last night—and then it was gone, as Helena said, “To the business at hand. Mr. Nielsen, I really must speak with your James MacPherson.”

Artie said, “I’m sure you can just eavesdrop on somebody else and find him that way.”

Pete said, “Or, you know, Google him.”

Artie harrumphed. “Let me talk to him first, at least. Give him a little advance warning about this explosion of interest in his sources.”

“As you wish,” Helena said. “But impress upon him: this is a matter of great importance.”

Helena kept on with her pronouncements about the seriousness of the situation, prompting Artie to throw all of them out. Pete zoomed off god only knew where in search of food, which was how Myka came to be in the hall alone with Helena, fighting a cowardly impulse to just run away, trying to figure out how to say goodbye appropriately and _then_ scurry her way back upstairs.

The words she in fact uttered seemed to come from somebody else. “There’s a minor league baseball game tonight that Pete wants to see. We’d have to drive to Sioux Falls for it, but you could… come too? If you wanted to? Since you aren’t from around here, it could be something different, at least.” She had no time for this at all; she had to write that Bishop/Oliver thing and get ready for her section tomorrow, not to mention read about sixteen articles. But Helena was so… yes, she could be awful, but she had also just been really decent, and Myka, having had way too much experience with Pete, was a big believer in rewarding good behavior… not that Myka thought going to a minor league baseball game was some big reward, but it was at least a peace offering.

Helena said, “That would be pleasant, I’m sure, but…” Myka steeled herself for polite dismissal. Helena followed up with, “My knowledge of your _baseball_ is quite limited. I suspect I will require instruction.”

“I can tell you all about it, no problem,” Myka said, far too quickly. “I mean, Pete’s the fan, but I know enough.” Only then did she remember the other members of Helena’s party. “Will Claudia and Leena be okay with the idea?”

Helena made a strange, almost birdlike, shoulder-rolling motion; Myka found herself tempted to try to mimic it, just to see if it could be done. “Psh. Claudia most likely made a detailed study before we arrived, and Leena enjoys a show in general. All will be well.”

TBC


	7. Silly Love Songs

Pete had known Myka long enough to know that she drank a lot only when she’d just done something stupid or when she was just about to do something stupid. So when she’d made her way through three beers by the middle of the fourth inning, he tapped her on the shoulder and said, “Do you want to take a little walk?”

“Not really,” she said. “I’m watching the game.”

“You hate baseball.”

“I like it today.”

“This is just like how you hated horses yesterday. Except in reverse.”

She went almost cross-eyed, trying to give him her regular “you’re a crazy person” look. “What are you talking about?” she finally asked.

Her stupid was her business, he decided. For now. “Doesn’t matter.”

Pete was perfectly happy to be at the game, but he was also a little… _suspicious_ wasn’t exactly the right word for the vibe he was getting; it was more that he was _apprehensive_. It had been weird enough for Myka to actually bring up going, since she generally had to be prodded and bribed before she’d even think about it (even though she knew Pete hated going to games by himself), but then to rope in the new ladies in their lives, plus Steve? At least Steve had a decent car and was willing to caravan; Pete’s old Volvo might have been able to fit all six of them, but they would have gotten really up close and personal.

Although Myka apparently wouldn’t have minded that at all if she got to sit next to Helena. Myka was hanging on every word the scary lady said tonight, and she clearly would’ve been happy to hang on her literally, too. On the plus side, Pete hadn’t realized that Myka had actually ever listened to what he’d told her about baseball; Helena was asking a lot of questions, and Myka was getting every answer right. As far as Pete could hear, anyway. As the innings wore on, Myka was leaning closer and closer to Helena, almost draped over her shoulder, talking, or maybe even whispering, right in her ear.

Pete tapped her on the shoulder again when she was draining her fourth beer, after the second out in the top of the seventh. “Seriously, I think we should take a walk.”

Myka tipped her head back and closed her eyes. “Fine,” she said. She leaned over and said something to Helena, who touched Myka’s arm and whispered something back.

They walked down to the field level, by the side of the bleachers; a clump of teenagers scattered when Pete and Myka appeared, and though Pete tried to reassure them—“No, really, guys, you’re fine”—they obviously considered him too much of an adult to be cool with whatever they were doing.

“I’m with them,” Myka said, a little indistinctly. “Can I go now?”

“No, you can’t go now. Listen to me for a second, would you?”

Myka just stood there. Then she said, “Well?”

“Oh. Right. The thing is, I think it might be not the best idea.” She kept just _standing_ there, like some kid. Like some drunk kid. Like the kid he used to be. “I’m just saying that maybe you shouldn’t do anything… you know, impulsive.”

“Like ask Helena and her friends to come to a baseball game?”

“No, that was a good idea, pretty much. Steve and Claudia and Leena are digging it, though I get the feeling that if you just give Claudia enough sugar, she’s up for anything. Did you see her face light up when she bit into that cotton candy? That was hilarious.”

“So that was a good idea, but any other ideas I have would be bad.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Because you mean one idea in particular.”

“Look, she swept in, and she’ll sweep back out again.”

“I’m going to tell you three things,” she said. She counted them off on her fingers. “One, that’s exactly why it’s fine, and two, how often do I do anything impulsive anyway, and three, don’t tell me what to do or what not to do.”

“Roger that on that last one, because as far as I can see, somebody telling you what to do gets you all hot for them. On a time delay, but still.”

“I am not having this conversation with you.”

“Well, you’re never going to _remember_ having this conversation with me, so I guess that’s kind of right.” He was more than a little ticked off—she was the one drinking like a fool, not him; she was the one about to make a mistake, not him. But after all that, who was going to have to pick up the pieces? That’s right: him. “So you can just go ahead and forget that I tried to help you out.”

He tried not to hear what she said to his back as he stalked away: “You know I remember everything.”

When Pete got back to the bleachers, the spectacle of stretch activities had started. The Sioux Falls Canary was about to leg it across the infield against some kid, and Claudia was practically bouncing up and down, saying, “How can your football thing be any better than this? You are crazy, Steve. Baseball is _awesome_. It’s my new favorite game!”

“Are you not,” Helena said, “the young creature who enthused to me, not so very long ago, ‘Oh, H.G., I cannot convey the extent of my admiration for quoits!’?”

Everybody stopped and stared at her. Claudia said, “That is the _worst_ impression of me that anybody has ever done.” She grinned and threw her arms around Helena. “And I _love_ that you did it! I totally forgive you for refusing to go down there and race that giant birdie with the ugly wings.”

Helena’s expression was… surprised, happy, sad, tender, angry? Pete thought it might be all the expressions. He saw that Leena was watching Claudia and Helena with another kind of look: worried. “You okay?” he asked her.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m not so sure about the two of them. They like it here. They’re enjoying themselves.”

“It’s pretty nice out tonight,” Pete agreed. “The game’s actually okay, too.”

“That isn’t what I mean,” Leena said.

When she didn’t go on, Pete said, “Okay. Be mysterious if you need to. People do what they need to do, so who am I to get in the way?”

Of course Myka showed up then, sipping on _yet another_ drink. “If you say a word,” she told him, “that is it.” She gestured in his vicinity with her free hand. “It.” She knocked back half the beer, then sat down next to Helena again. “Hi,” she said.

Helena glanced up at Pete. He looked heavenward. She apparently found that funny; she chuckled, then turned her attention back to Myka. She, too, said, “Hi.”

Myka put her head on Helena’s shoulder.

Pete wanted _so bad_ to cough “notagoodidea” into his hand.

“What’s quoits?” Steve asked Claudia.

“You take this thing, it’s what they used to put on horses’ hooves—”

“A horseshoe?”

“Excellent, you still know what those are. So yeah, you take a horseshoe and you bend it into a circle, or sometimes you use a discus with a hole in it, and you throw it…”

“Someday I really want to find out where in hell you people are from,” Pete said to Leena.

“Not there,” she said.

****

Myka knew she was lying in the back seat of Pete’s Volvo. She knew it because she could feel the leather under her cheek, and because she could hear the rumble of Pete’s voice mixed with the growl of the engine. They had to be on their way home, she thought.

She fell asleep.

She woke up.

“Very little holds my attention,” Helena was saying.

Even fog-brained, Myka recognized that pouty, sulky tone: it was adolescent entitlement. Jaded, know-it-all, accustomed to having everything handed to them, and if suddenly something wasn’t, they acted like they deserved to be persuaded to make an effort.

She missed Pete’s response. Helena said, “One merely acts one’s part. It is all so terribly dull.”

When Myka tuned back in again, the radio was on. Probably. Someone sang: “Three o’clock in the morning… it’s quiet, there’s no one around…”

Back again. “Can’t tell yet,” Pete was saying, “but it might be a woman. Might be lotsa women.”

“Indeed?” Helena responded.

The word was a knife; Pete had said something Helena found interesting. Myka wanted to make her come alive like that. Myka wanted things that she knew were perilous to let herself want so badly, and maybe Pete had been right about the drinking, not because it would make her act like a fool but because she couldn’t stop thinking now, couldn’t stop imagining that voice saying things, couldn’t stop wishing those eyes would look at her and see something worth touching and holding and _keeping_ , and she didn’t know when it happened or why it happened, and it didn’t matter anymore what Helena wanted to know or how she demanded to know it, because that had nothing to do with this, or maybe it had everything to do with this, because the parts of Myka’s defenses that being drunk had smashed were letting in even more disturbing, compelling thoughts, ones about being told what to do, being _commanded_. And then _commanding_ in return.

She’d lost the thread. Pete’s voice: “Why’d you get so mad?”

Helena, quiet but clipped: “I have a particular response to defiance.”

Myka could hear tension in her; something in Myka coiled in response.

“Yeah, clearly you like to get your own way. I’d think you were an only child or something, but weren’t you talking about your brother before?”

“Yes, my brother. Speaking of one who gets his way.”

Myka couldn’t pay attention anymore. Once again, she fell asleep.

****

Helena was relieved when they arrived at, as Pete put it, “Myka’s attic-with-a-kitchen that she thinks is an apartment.” At last the interrogation would come to an end. Helena could have put a stop to it, but he had seemed so unnecessarily hostile toward her with regard to Myka’s imbibing that she had taken it as something of a challenge to return herself to his good graces. And that had meant answering his questions, to the extent that she was able.

Pete said, “I’ll get her inside.” He exited the car, presumably so that he could proceed to extract Myka from the rear seat.

Just as he closed the car door, Helena heard Myka say, “No, Helena, you.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You. You get me inside.”

Well. If the young woman had not been so terribly intoxicated, Helena might have taken that, considered in the light of her behavior earlier in the evening, as a rather explicit invitation. Now, however, it was more likely that she simply thought Helena’s help would be preferable to the rough handling that seemed on offer from Pete. Helena swiveled around. “My dear,” she said, “I imagine he is far more familiar with your living situation? Knows where your medicaments are located?”

Myka opened her eyes—green, Helena noted, even in the gloom of the late hour—and then blinked, very slowly. “Please,” she said.

Pete managed to wrestle the back door open then, and Helena said, “I believe she would prefer that I assist her. But if you would still be kind enough to help her from the car?”

Helena found wrangling Myka up the stairs and into her apartment not overly difficult, for in her incapacitated state, Myka was quite pliant. She was also quite winning, Helena concluded as she sat beside the girl on her bed, attempting to ensure that she would simply go to sleep and not endanger herself in any way. She smoothed unruly curls away from Myka’s face, and Myka reached up what appeared to be a lazy hand, pushing at Helena’s fingers.

Or, actually, not pushing at all: enfolding and holding. Myka’s grip suddenly seemed terribly strong. She tugged on the hand of Helena’s that she had captured, and Helena obligingly bent closer. “I have to tell you something,” Myka whispered when they were quite near. Helena waited, but Myka did not speak. Instead, she inhaled sharply, then turned her head and pressed her lips to Helena’s.

It was not a surprise, not really. Helena had certainly gone no distance out of her way to discourage such an occurrence. (She conceded that Leena was perhaps not entirely wrong.) Helena knew she was beautiful, almost beyond human understanding, and she knew that humans who were particularly moved by beauty tended to find her aspect particularly compelling. Beauty was a prime reason she had chosen Domination over Seraph or Cherub, even over Thronos; it had been vain of her, and she knew this was held against her. One stain among many.

And it would be easy enough to add one more, easy enough to continue: to send Pete away, to tell him that Myka needed supervision, to remain here, to enjoy what was so freely offered… it would be easy. It would be easy, but. But. Pete had said something, in the car: “If you’re bored, that means it isn’t working, whatever you’re doing. You need something different.” And then he had offered her the small delicacy, the “mini-Oreo.” It had been delicious.

Myka was delicious as well, Helena thought as she continued to be kissed… but to have her this way would be nothing different. She was strong-willed, this young woman, but this was no expression of her strong will; this was simply an impulse brought on by alcohol and physical attraction.

It had been, Helena reflected, quite a while since she had seen any reason to curb impulses of this sort—her own or those of others. This day was altogether unusual. And so Helena kissed Myka one time from her own desire, felt her body rise… “How you tempt me,” she said. Then she moved away from Myka, who uttered a soft “no” of complaint, then closed her eyes and nestled into her pillow. The curve of her jaw was exquisite.

“You will most likely remember none of this on the morrow,” Helena said, very quietly. “That will be for the best.”

Pete was standing beside the car when she emerged from the house. He asked, “You’re sure she’s okay?”

“Reasonably so,” Helena said.

“Your hair’s messed up,” he said, but his voice held no rancor.

“Yes,” Helena agreed.

“You seem like a decent person,” Pete said. “I’m not sure I would have said that this morning.”

“Well,” Helena said.

“Myka’s important. I want you to be decent about her, too.”

“I will make every effort.”

“Okay then. Where can I drop you?”

“Drop me? Oh, the car. No, thank you, I’m perfectly happy to walk.”

“Back upstairs?”

Helena almost ground her teeth.  It was as if he _wanted_ to make it easy for her to fail… she bent her head, grimacing at the idea that she, of all beings, could be made to feel shame. “Not back upstairs,” she said.

“Okay then,” he said again. “Thanks.”

But Helena was aware that he watched her as she walked away.

****

It wasn’t really a traditional hangover, Myka thought. It was more that she felt _estranged_ from everything. She was brushing her teeth, but the toothbrush was different. She was stirring milk into her coffee, but she’d never held a spoon before. She was cracking eggs to scramble, but the _shapes_. At her desk, her computer screen was so bright, but so far away.

As it turned out, it helped her write her commentary over the next few hours. Certainly Bishop had been familiar with hangovers—the traditional kind—and reading Oliver always made Myka feel as if she had a hangover of this estranging kind, so thought led to thought, and there it was. An accomplishment, and it was barely ten in the morning.

She left her apartment, started walking to campus. The day was astonishingly, almost off-puttingly, beautiful. Okay, Myka told herself, you can have till you get to the Lit Building. You can think about it till then, but at that point, it’s off the table. And you’re not allowed to walk more slowly than usual, either.

So for twelve glorious minutes, she relived the events of the end of the night. What she was going to do about those events, she had no idea, but at least she knew that she wasn’t alone in… whatever it was she was in. Pete had been so wrong. It was the absolute opposite of a bad idea; every detail told her so, from how gently Helena had put her in her bed, how willingly she had bent down to put her perfect ear near Myka’s mouth, to how bravely she, Myka, had then done exactly what she wanted to do and been rewarded for it. (And she did drink for courage, she could admit that—she didn’t do it often, and usually it didn’t work, but this time!) Rewarded, yes, by the fact that Helena didn’t pull away, by the shallow-water warmth and wet of her mouth, and then, finally, most of all, by the one kiss that Myka didn’t initiate, the one that Helena had wanted.

Myka sensed she was nearing the courtyard, so she started negotiating with herself about whether “get to the Lit Building” could actually be taken to mean “get to your office in the Lit Building.” Both sides were making solid arguments, which was why it came as a shock to her when she ran into—literally ran into—the object of her relivings. “Oh my god,” she said when she saw who she’d knocked to the ground.

“So tiresome,” Helena grumbled before she looked up. “I am not—oh,” she said when she did.

Myka reached a hand down to Helena. The gesture, the positioning, why did it all feel unnatural? Lingering effects of the hangover? Myka shook her head, and things settled back into relative familiarity when Helena was on her feet again. But then they were standing and breathing and staring, and Myka thought about how the version of herself who had walked through this courtyard yesterday had had no idea how differently the blood would run through the version standing in it today.

“I’m to see your Mr. Nielsen,” Helena finally said.

“To see Artie? You didn’t want—I mean, of course you are.” Myka knew she shouldn’t have felt so crushed, because she shouldn’t have imagined that Helena was there to see her in the first place. But she also knew that she could never have stopped herself from imagining it. “Can I walk you in?”

“Of course,” Helena said.

All right, so they were going to be formal with each other. They were going to pretend it hadn’t happened. Okay. They walked up the steps, Myka _holding it together_ a half-step behind Helena; Myka pulled the door open and held it as Helena entered. Once inside, Helena hesitated, and Myka saw that she didn’t remember where Artie’s office was. “Come on, this way,” she said. She would drop Helena off, and she would go up to her office, and she would lose it at that point and not one second before that door was closed behind her.

Myka thought it was strange, in fact _mysterious_ , that what happened next was the part she would never forget. Well, she would never forget any of it, but _this_ was the part that was burned into her brain, a movie titled “What Happened,” a loop that went on and on and on.

****

“What Happened”

Myka realizes that Helena is no longer beside her, so she stops, turns around. Helena has turned pale and is standing still; her lips are moving, and Myka becomes aware of a sound like a gathering wave: Helena is murmuring the word “no” over and over and over, not run together, not “nonono,” but “no… no… no…”

Myka goes to Helena, takes her by the hand. “What’s the matter?”

“Something’s wrong,” Helena grates out, then goes back to “no… no… no…”, clutching, clawing at Myka’s arms as if trying to enfold her, escalating her voice’s volume as if the repeated word were some incantation that could build high walls around them both.

“Let’s get you into Artie’s office, at least,” Myka says. “You need to sit down.”

“No… no… no…”

Myka enters the office first, practically dragging Helena behind her. (“No… no… no…”) She notices that Artie already has company—but this is an emergency.

“Myka,” Artie says, “I’m so glad you’re here. At long last, please meet my colleague, James MacPherson.”

“Hello,” Myka says to the back of the man’s head. His hair is inky black, darker even than Helena’s. “Artie, I’m sorry, it’s kind of a situation…”

“No… no… no…”

James MacPherson turns around. He doesn’t look at Myka. “Hello, Helena,” he says. His eyes glint. “It’s been a very long time.”

TBC


	8. Band on the Run

After that, a jumble of images and sounds: Helena rearing back like she’d been hit; MacPherson standing up, seeming, beyond all reason, to grow taller; Helena _hissing_ , or not quite, but making some kind of noise that was not at all human. Artie seemed to be trying to say something in the background, but Myka felt a gnawing and clawing deep in her gut that made it clear she couldn’t stand it in that room another second, and she was very clear on one other thing, that if she didn’t get Helena out too, something unfathomably terrible was going to happen.

She didn’t have time to think about what she was doing or how Helena would respond; she just grabbed her from behind by both arms and wrenched her backwards. Helena sprawled back against Myka; Myka lost her footing and scrabbled back, hitting the side of the doorway, rebounding into the hall, and she instinctively thrust Helena away, the only thing that could keep her from being thrown back into the office. Helena staggered down the hall, clearly trying to keep her balance, then just as clearly failing; she collapsed floorward.

“What the…”

It was Pete’s “confused” voice, and Myka almost wept with relief when she heard it. But then she realized that he had Steve, Claudia, and Leena following him, like a line of innocent, sweet ducklings, and she knew she couldn’t let them anywhere near that office, but at least Helena was trying to stand up, so she wasn’t too badly hurt, so Myka pleaded, as quietly as she could, “Help me get her out of here, hurry, Pete, everybody, _please_.”

As for how they had ended up at Dakota Park: Myka had assumed they’d just go to her place, or Pete’s, but Pete had said, “You’d make the worst secret agent _ever_. Don’t you figure those would be the logical places to look, if Artie and this MacPherson guy are seriously going to ‘come after us’? But the park, see, is better, because everybody thinks you hate being outside.”

“I don’t hate being outside.”

“I didn’t say you _do_ hate being outside.”

“I just don’t have a lot of time to _go_ outside.”

“Which is why we’re at the park.”

“I still don’t get it,” Steve said. “Who’s the guy? And why is Helena still practically comatose? For her, I mean.”

Helena was slumped on a bench by the edge of the lawn space, with Leena and Claudia on either side. “I’m not sure,” Leena said, leaning in front of Helena as if trying to catch her eye. “I can’t quite…”

Claudia made supportive noises. She ran her hand along Helena’s back and shoulders, very gently.

Helena shook her head slowly, back and forth. “Do not,” she said. “Either of you.”

“At least she can still talk,” Pete tried to enthuse.

Myka paced in front of the bench, trying to walk everything back, work it all out. Helena had known something was wrong. Helena knew MacPherson; MacPherson knew Helena. Something _weird_ and _unaccountable_ happened when they were in the same room. Now Leena and Claudia were about to say something about that, or… figure out who MacPherson really was? Because none of them had recognized the name; Helena hadn’t even blinked, talking about him before.

So who was he? And why wouldn’t Helena want them to say?

Myka conceded that she couldn’t, in fact, account for the unaccountable part of what had gone on, but there was nothing particularly mysterious about what Helena looked like now: someone in shock. And then something came to her. “He hurt you,” she said. “Didn’t he. What did he do to you?”

Helena shook her head again, just as slowly.

“Please, Helena,” Myka said, “don’t be like this. Whatever happened, it must have been bad, because you _felt_ that he was there, before we even went in, and you didn’t want to, but I made you do it, and then he was going to kill you, or you were going to kill him, or it felt like something like that had to happen, and I was there and I saw it, but you’re going to sit there and not tell me anything at all?” She didn’t mean to say what she said next, but out it came. “And then are you going to pretend like it didn’t happen, like last night?”

Five faces turned to her. Then four of them turned to Helena. “Hold it,” Pete said. “Helena, you _pretty strongly_ led me to believe that nothing happened last night.”

“Last night,” Helena said, as if it were a completely foreign concept.

Myka said, “Helena, you absolutely have all my sympathy, whatever this guy did to you, but honestly, this morning, to practically act like we never met?”

Claudia punched Helena, not exactly lightly, on the arm. “I totally called it!”

That seemed to shock Helena out of her torpor. She scowled. “Whatever happened to being solicitous about my welfare?”

“That was before I knew you did what I totally called you wanting to do.”

“I did no such thing!” Helena was clearly trying to conjure up her usual authority; she was just as clearly failing. Myka resented feeling bad for her.

Pete bent down and got into Helena’s face. “Then why does Myka think you did? Huh?”

Helena said, “I don’t know what Myka thinks I did, or indeed why Myka thinks I did anything at all. I imagine she remembers little of last night—certainly not whatever occurred after the baseball game.”

“She remembers everything,” Pete said before Myka could. “Doesn’t matter if she’s hammered; I mean _everything_. What happened last Tuesday, what happened a year ago last Tuesday. Just imagine what that’s like.”

“I don’t have to,” Helena said. “Myka. I assumed… and so I refrained… do you see?”

“Oh,” Myka said. She was trying to figure out whether she still resented the situation, if Helena had thought she was… sparing her feelings? Sparing Myka embarrassment by not mentioning that she’d thrown herself at Helena? But Myka _wasn’t_ embarrassed… but she _had_ needed liquid courage… but she _always_ needed help with things like this… but Helena didn’t have any way of knowing that…

“Well, I don’t see,” Pete said. “Seriously, Helena, if you’re messing with Myka, I don’t care how upset you are about this MacPherson dude. That is not okay.”

“Um,” Steve said. “Pete, not that I don’t recognize that you’re the guy who grades the papers I write, but I think this might be between the two of them?” Myka fell in love with him a little more.

Leena said, “Not entirely. But for the moment.” She crossed her arms and looked sidelong at Helena. Myka fell in love with her a little too.

Helena said, “If everyone could simply stop. Myka, we will discuss last night at a time that is not now. Pete, nothing more happened than that of which you are already aware. Steve, you are fast becoming my favorite. Leena, your somewhat restrained disapproval is noted. Claudia, if you hit me again, I shall see that you and the practice of planetary alignment enjoy a lengthy hiatus from each other. Do I make myself clear?”

“She’s back,” Pete said.

 “Oh brother,” Claudia said, and Helena slapped the side of her head. “Hey! I didn’t mean him! And I thought you said no hitting!”

“I explained the consequences that would ensue, were _you_ to hit _me_.”

“Yeah, she’s definitely back,” Pete said. “Okay, scary lady, care to explain what it was that happened that made Myka pick you up and throw you down a hallway?”

Myka felt her face start to burn. She said, “I don’t think I would really characterize it like that.”

“No, no,” Helena said. She looked fully at Myka for the first time since it had happened. “That is exactly what you did. And I thank you for it.” And Myka wanted so much, _so much_ , to fall to her knees in front of that bench, to fall to her knees and pretend that no one else was there and pretend that it was still last night. And Myka was certain that Helena could see all of that. And Myka thought, or maybe it was just that she hoped, that she herself could feel that same frequency of want resonating in Helena.

When Helena spoke, Myka heard that resonance, as well as warmth and darkness and a gathering strength. “Myka, you are correct in this: I have a history with Mr. MacPherson. I regret that that is all I can say. But I will certainly need to speak with him, and I think it will be best for everyone if he and I meet alone.”

Myka said, “I don’t think that’s safe.” But she didn’t believe it. Helena was straightening, translating her body into serenity, becoming singular, uncanny, all the things that Myka didn’t understand but couldn’t resist.

“My safety,” Helena said, “is completely beside the point.”

“It isn’t to me,” Myka said.

Helena smiled. “Thank you, but that is not what I meant. Whatever he intends, it will not harm me. But he will not care if it harms others, and I would prefer that those others not include you.”

“What about me and Leena?” Claudia asked.

Leena said, “Yes, Helena. What about us?”

And then, suddenly, it was as if Helena, Leena, and Claudia moved into a slightly different dimension. Myka felt like she was pressing against a bubble that held only those three, straining to hear—and she could still hear, a little, but Pete and Steve both looked baffled, shaking their heads like they’d wandered into a country where they didn’t speak the language.

Leena went on, “I know there’s only one who would make you react like that. Whose appearance would surprise you like that.”

Claudia said, “Seriously? You mean it’s actually—”

“Yes,” Helena interrupted, “but if you would please be circumspect. I will deal with this.”

Claudia said, with a visible shudder, “Uh… don’t you think some enormous backup is in order?”

Helena snapped, “I do not. It is as Leena said: I was surprised. I will not be so again.”

“Claudia may be right,” Leena said. “I don’t see the point in your doing this alone.”

“Do you not? Well, nor would others, but I will show them as well.”

“Helena, you don’t have to prove yourself to anyone.” Leena’s tone suggested that Helena was being particularly adolescent.

“You are right; I will be able to prove nothing to anyone else. But it will mean something—and possibly everything—to me.”

Leena said, “I don’t see you suddenly being happy with the situation just because you—and maybe the two of us, and Mrs. Frederic—know that you’ve bested him by yourself.”

Helena took a moment to respond. Then she said, very quietly, “My father will know.”

Leena said back, just as quietly, “Your father already knows.”

“And what good has that done me, then, now, ever? No, I must try, and if I fail, then fine.” She gave an ominous chuckle. “Charles can have a go.”

Claudia said, “You’re weirdly chipper about this.”

“The more I think on it,” Helena pronounced, “the more I like it. There’s a pleasing symmetry.”

Claudia’s face was almost Pete-like in its confusion. “But wait, talk about symmetry, how do we know he doesn’t have help?”

“I don’t believe he would be scheming in whatever roundabout way that he is if he had legions behind him. This smacks of a smaller operation. All the more reason for me to take him on alone… it will feed his pride.”

Leena said, not accusingly, “And yours.”

“And mine,” Helena agreed. She did seem weirdly chipper; she was smiling in a way Myka had never seen before: it wasn’t all the smiles, like in Artie’s office, but rather none of the smiles. “I believe I have admitted to essentially all the motivations you have attributed to me. I am proud, I am vain. I am set on proving things that cannot be proven, and even if they are, will not avail me. All true. And yet.” She set her face back to its standard, slightly bored, expression, and the bubble dissipated. As if nothing at all unusual had happened, Helena said to Pete, “I must ask for your assistance. If you would take this company to a place of safety. And then if you would contact your Mr. Nielsen and have him send MacPherson to me.”

Pete stood up very straight. Myka knew he’d been in the military for a while, after high school, but she’d never seen him actually look like he was in the military. She could imagine him in a uniform now, with that posture. “Send him to you here?” he asked. There was an implied “sir” somewhere in there, Myka was sure.

“Yes, this will do nicely. Now, away with you all.”

That was definitely an order, and something in Myka wanted to obey just like Pete was, just like Steve and Claudia and Leena, gathering themselves up, beginning to shuffle away through the grass. But the rest of her couldn’t go along with the idea. She stood her ground. “I’m not leaving you,” she said.

Helena sighed. It was her long-suffering sigh. “Myka,” she said. “I would very much appreciate your cooperation. I believe this should be dealt with as soon as possible.”

“No. I’m not going.”

“Fine. The rest of you, carry on. Myka will join you shortly.” She turned to Myka. “Why are you being so childish?”

Myka shook her head. This woman really was impossible. “It’s exactly what I thought: you’re going to pretend like it didn’t happen. But I was there, in that office, and it was horrible. I don’t even know what happened, and I know I haven’t known you long enough to have much of a right to protect you or stand up for you, but I… why are you looking at me like that?” Studying her, like Myka was a zoo animal, or a Pollock painting.

“You are childish, and then you are not. You are completely alluring, and then you are not. You are fragile, and then you are not. What am I to make of you?”

Myka stammered, “N-nothing? Something? I don’t know. Aren’t most people like that?”

Helena said, “Not in my experience.”

Myka said, “It’s not like I know what to make of you either.”

Helena laughed out loud. “You certainly knew last night.”

And there came the flush of blood to Myka’s face again; she wanted to be reminded of last night, she truly did, and she wanted it to happen again, more, better, but she also wanted not to be laughed at. Even though Helena’s laughter didn’t sound mean, but she was still laughing, and it was about _that_. “About that… I’m sorry I brought it up before. We don’t have to talk about it.”

“But we do,” Helena said. “And if I promise to do so, after this fiend is dispatched, will you promise in return to leave me to do said dispatching?”

“I don’t see why I should promise that,” Myka said. Helena wasn’t making any sense—not that that was new, but everything was becoming more and more baffling. Why did she keep getting these strange _feelings_ around Helena? Not _those_ feelings, she admonished herself—but the sense that she had _just_ missed something, had _almost_ seen the crucial aspect, had heard only the softest _whisper_ of the right word?

And what did Helena’s father and brother have to do with any of it?

Helena tilted her head, and Myka felt like she was about to be scolded, like a puppy. “Myka darling, I truly cannot approach this encounter in a state of distraction.”

Myka said, “You don’t have to be distracted. Let me help you.” She heard herself: she sounded like she was begging. She _was_ begging.

Helena wasn’t having any of it. “I must do this alone. No: I must _demonstrate_ that I can do this alone.”

“Why? Who are you proving yourself to? You’re the strongest person, the most compelling person, I’ve ever met. I can’t believe anyone wouldn’t believe that you can do anything. I mean, you’ve already made me do so many things I never do.” And she felt herself slam against a wall made of those things, because the _almost_ she sensed then had something to do with ferocity and power and how Helena was forging herself into some kind of weapon—no, more than that, an arsenal, and if Myka could just _reach_ for that, could just _touch_ that—and she moved with purpose and with force and abruptly, violently, she and Helena were locked together, hands, mouths, moving, stilling, _creating_ something.

***

An aggressive harmony, a furious simultaneity—that was Myka’s embrace. Helena felt something she couldn’t name pulling at her; her resolve faltered. She tried to calm herself: this distraction of a girl was of course only that, only that of course, but she really was so very striking, so tangible, so palpable, so very, in fact, _distracting_ … yet Helena braced herself, gave a gentle push to separate their bodies, and said, “No, Myka, please stop, I beg of you; nothing good can come of this now.”

Myka, clearly overcome, clearly wounded, choked, “Nothing good. Of course. Because why would someone like you actually want someone like me?”

Helena involuntarily vocalized a small, frustrated noise, something between a growl and a sigh. “ _Want_? You think I do not _want_ you? I assure you, the profundity and profusion of ways in which I want you are—” She made the noise again upon seeing Myka’s face unchanged. “This is an impossible situation. Even if I could be who you wish me to be, I could not do so _now_ , given what is about to happen.”

“Fine! What _is_ about to happen? You’re going to argue with some guy who, I don’t know, _assaulted_ you, argue with him about something that should have been in Paradise Lost but isn’t? I feel like Pete, saying something like this, but seriously: everybody in academia needs a reality check. The stakes are just not that high! Nobody really cares!”

Helena marveled at Myka’s ability to slide so seemingly easily from being a creature with a fine, firm grasp on the complexity of the world’s wonder to being such a small and petty human. She said, “I assure you: you cannot, in fact, conceive of what is at stake.”

“Why? Because I’m just a grad student? Or because I’m just an idiot who has a crush on you?”

“Myka, you are far more than those things, but this is not _about you_.” Helena felt herself losing control. “Do not continue to provoke me.”

“ _Provoke_ you? By asking you to explain yourself like a normal person?”

“I am not a normal person!” Helena roared.

“Yeah, I can see that! Because a normal person wouldn’t act like they were some big _army of one_ , about to _go into battle_ with some guy who’s also some big _army of one_ , like the _fate of the world_ was hanging in the balance, when all it really is, is some stupid little academic turf war that people’s huge _egos_ won’t let them acknowledge doesn’t matter at all! And seriously, Helena, if your dad and your brother don’t respect you like you think they should, then I’m sorry, but get some therapy or just _get over it_ like everybody else has to!”

Helena began to breathe heavily; her reason fled. She _could not_ allow Myka to continue to say such things, and there was a sure way to make her stop, to terminate all of it, the accusations, the distractions, and the worst of it all, the infernal _minimizing_.

Helena closed her eyes. She twisted her neck. She opened her eyes and turned them skyward; she held her hands out in supplication. “Forgive me,” she said. Then she shook—a great shudder, a thunder of being—and stood, at last, before Myka in all her wingèd glory.

Myka’s mouth dropped open. Then she… smiled? Smiled, yes, widely, and surged toward Helena once again, embracing her as best she could, placing her mortal lips on Helena’s angelic ones, softly, yet pushing and delving and _claiming_ as if she could never be close enough. When finally their mouths parted, Myka leaned her forehead gently down against Helena’s.

Helena gasped, said “That’s new,” took a slight stumble backwards, and fainted.

TBC


	9. Live and Let Die

Myka had never been so happy. In fact, she had never imagined that such an exalted level of happiness existed.

Everything made sense now. Well, maybe not everything, but so very much. There was the small matter of her sitting on the grass in Dakota Park, holding on her lap, somewhat awkwardly, an unconscious angel… and Myka did have a minor suspicion in a corner of her mind that the fact that she genuinely believed there were wings folded against her thighs meant that she was authentically insane. But that possibility seemed mostly an annoyance, something she would need to worry about later; right now, she was stroking snow-white feathers, running her hands along a wing’s prominent humerus, finding with her fingers the ropy supracoracoideus that ran up and over Helena’s shoulder to what Myka was sure had to be amazingly strong pectorals. She’d taken an animal anatomy class, back when she’d thought medicine of some sort was her calling, but it hadn’t held her interest… if she’d known wings could look and feel like this, she might have persisted.

The face. The face of an angel. No wonder she seemed more than just beautiful; no wonder Myka had felt, was still feeling, such an immediate, overpowering _need_ for her.

Helena’s eyelids fluttered—how delicately dark her lashes were, compared to the strong steely white of the feathers Myka continued to caress—and she opened her eyes. “Oh, Myka,” she said, and then, more deeply, “oh.”

“Your wings,” Myka said, in amazement. “They beat.”

“Yes. Of course.”

“No, I mean, like a heartbeat.”

“Yes. Does that surprise you?”

“It’s just that they always write about angels, hosts of angels, and the beating of wings. I thought it meant… flapping.”

“Flapping,” Helena said. She clearly couldn’t decide between amusement and indignation.

“How was I supposed to know?” Myka asked. She looked away from Helena’s face and back at the wings. She moved her fingers through them.

“Myka,” Helena said. “Myka, you must stop… _touching_ them. It is… intimate.”

“It’s what?” Myka asked, focusing on, mesmerized by, one feather’s calamus, rachis, the barbs making up the vanes…

“Myka _please_ …”

The nakedness in her voice found Myka’s blood, made it spark and steam—then she realized what Helena was actually saying, and that flustered her. “Oh… _oh_. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, that’s got to be incredibly rude and invasive and—”

“Myka, stop.” Helena commanded. “It would be… well. Quite welcome, at any other time. Quite.” She cleared her throat and sat up, then stood up; her odd shoulder-shaking motions made complete sense now that Myka saw that their purpose was the settling and smoothing of wings.

Myka was trying not to focus on that “quite welcome” as Helena reached a hand down and pulled her from the ground. She had been right about the pectorals, that was clear—Helena could probably have tossed her over her shoulder, if she’d felt like it; flung her across the park.

But Helena didn’t do that, and now they were just standing facing each other, too far away, but still a little too close, as if they’d just been introduced at a party. Myka had half expected Helena to have grown in stature, somehow, but she was still her own height, leaving Myka the taller by a good three inches. “Is that the new part?” Myka asked.

“Pardon?”

“The new part. You said ‘that’s new’ right before you passed out. I feel like I shouldn’t be taller than you, so is that the new part?”

Helena squinted, then laughed a small laugh. “No,” she said. “That is most assuredly not the new part.”

“So what is it?”

Helena said, “Perhaps that is something we could discuss later?”

“Okay,” Myka said. She felt like she should say something else. “So are you… are you a particular angel?”

“I’m quite particular,” Helena said dryly.

“No, I mean, are you, I don’t know, in the Bible? Or in Paradise Lost?”

“In a sense.”

“Wait. Wait a minute. If you’re an angel, then what does that make MacPherson? Is he one too?” Realization dawned, or, more accurately, set. “Oh no. That’s what Claudia and Leena were talking about, they were talking about who he is. Is he… he’s not some lesser bad guy, is he? You wouldn’t have been so upset, and they wouldn’t have said what they said… is he seriously, I mean, it’s weird even to say it, although it’s no weirder than standing here with you, so I guess I’ll just go ahead and say it: he’s, you know…” She couldn’t decide if she should put air quotes around the word or articulate it in the deepest voice she could muster. In the end, she just said it. “Satan.”

“Sadly, you are correct,” Helena said, as if Myka had done nothing more than note that rain happened to be falling on a picnic.

“So I get why you were so upset in the office. I mean, obviously. But I don’t get why you aren’t upset now.”

“If you heard my conversation with Leena and Claudia, then I would think… how _did_ you hear my conversation with Leena and Claudia, incidentally?”

“I don’t know. I just heard you. Like through water, almost, but I could hear you. Pete and Steve couldn’t, I don’t think.”

“Interesting,” Helena said.

“New?” Myka said, hopefully.

“No, not new. Unusual, however, and thus quite characteristic of you, as I continue to find.”

“Thanks? But that doesn’t really tell me why you want to do this by yourself.”

“That is simply because this fellow and I have a history. A rather personal history.”

“A personal history? Oh man—I sound like Pete, but oh _man_ —does this mean you’re one of the ones actually in the _plot_ in Paradise Lost?”

“It all depends on what you mean by _plot_ , exactly, because—”

“Because you can’t be one of the bad guys, because you want to fight him, but he doesn’t really run around with any of the good guys… oh wow, are you Abdiel?”

Helena snorted. “Abdiel? In the first place, you seem not to be attending to the fact that my name is Helena. In the second place, _Abdiel_? Please. Such a ditherer. No courage of his convictions. ‘I’m with Satan! No, I’m on the other side again!’ Pick a team, you indecisive little snot.”

“Okay, you’re Helena, and you’re not anybody else, but doesn’t that mean you’re _not_ in the story?”

Helena gave her a very avian head-tilt. Then she said, “Perhaps recent revelations have stunned the scholar out of you.”

“What?”

“Really, Myka. Bring your mind to bear. What are you researching? And can you not now imagine why I have been sent here?”

“What am I researching? The Milton, all the… oh, _man_.”

“Exactly. Or rather, exactly the opposite.”

“Woman,” Myka said. She felt… dumb? Numb?

Helena laughed. “As your friend Pete phrased it to me: lotsa women. For obviously it seemed odd to you that the only female figures so identified in your beloved Paradise Lost are Satan’s child, Sin, and your own ancestress, Eve. ”

Myka shook her head. “It didn’t, actually, not until Pete and I started working with Artie. I just thought it was that Milton was of his time. That he didn’t think much of women, or about women, except I guess as symbols. Not as people. Or, well, angels.”

“You are correct that he was of his time, but not only in the sense you cite. He was also participating, as have so many who have recounted this same tale, in what I believe one might overdramatically call a cover-up.”

“But why would MacPherson want to help Artie uncover it? I mean, what’s in it for him?”

“I have my suspicions,” Helena said, “which I would be happy to discuss further, but I have a quite strong feeling that it is becoming essential that you _leave this location_ at this very moment by which I mean _go now_!” She shoved Myka then, with all the strength Myka had imagined she would have; somehow she managed to fling Myka such that she didn’t end up impaled on a branch of the tree she landed against, but she landed hard.

Myka gasped to get air back in her lungs, or maybe just in amazement, as she watched Helena rise into the sky. She blocked out the sun—no, she _became_ the sun, and Myka suddenly understood what a halo was. She thought of the twisted, beglittered coat hanger she’d worn in a long-ago Christmas pageant. It was almost a non sequitur.

“Myka!” Pete’s voice whispered from behind her. Clustered with him were Leena, Claudia, Steve… and Artie? “I texted you, and then I even called you, but you didn’t pay any attention! So we all figured maybe you were dead, because Helena had killed you, and we would come and help bury you.”

Steve muttered, “Seriously, Pete.”

“Okay, seriously, you didn’t pick up or text back, and I was worried, and Claudia and Leena were worried about Helena, and Steve follows us around, and Artie thinks we made this all up to get out of teaching our sections today. But given that Helena’s got wings, he might buy it now.”

Claudia said, “And realization in three… two…”

Pete said, “Wait. Did I just say that Helena’s got wings?”

“Yeah,” Claudia told him.

Steve started doing some sort of breathing exercise. Artie, usually red-faced, seemed to have no blood reaching his features. Leena started darting her head around, as did Claudia, and Myka knew exactly what—rather, who—they were looking for.

MacPherson, himself now winged, streaked into the park through the air, almost literally like lightning, and then stopped, suspending himself before Helena. Myka wondered why his wings were white.

For a moment it seemed as if their clash would involve nothing but stares. Then Helena reached back and _uprooted a tree_ and flung it, boomerang-like, at MacPherson. He dodged it easily, almost lazily, and uprooted a tree of his own, with which he swung in Helena’s general direction.

Then Helena spoke.

****

 _ **Helena**_. And so. Like clockwork, you turn up again.

 

 _ **MacPherson**_. You seemed surprised to see me, my old friend.

 

 _ **Helena**_. Do not call me your friend. You are my foe—

But no, that word is greater than your state.

You are a rock that lodges in one’s shoe.

 

 _ **MacPherson**_. You wound me with such talk, but I am not

Amazed to hear such from your family’s mouth.

How is your brother, by the way?

 

 _ **Helena**_.                                          He is

Himself. You know. Your proxies war with his

In battles large and small. As you and I

commence this new conflict, so shall you lose

just as your surrogates are wont to do.

 

 ** _MacPherson_** _._ And yet if I recall such games aright,

Your brother has not always ruled the day.

Perhaps you should request your father’s help.

 

 _ **Helena**_ _._ My father knows what will transpire here.

He sees, I know, no need to deal with your

vile treachery. He has far better tasks

on which to spend his time.

 

 ** _MacPherson_** _._  Oh, yes?

Tasks better than assuring that his flesh,

His blood, his only begotten… daughter stays

Among the hosts of heaven?

 

 _ **Helena**_ _(shrugs)._                 What’s meant to be,

Will. I have no need to beg his aid.

 

 ** _MacPherson_** _._ Indeed, I know, as do we all, that you

cannot but live. However, others for

Whom you may care are not made of the same

strong matter. I can cause them pain, and will.

 

 _ **Helena**_ _._ No, you will not.

 

 ** _MacPherson_** _._                     Why not?

 

 _ **Helena**_ _._                                              Why not? For I

Will stop you, fool. How dare you challenge me?

 

 ** _Pete_** _._ You guys would make a really awesome game.

For X-Box, I mean. Angel warfare! But

This deal with dialogue in verse? Has got

To stop. The kids would hate it, see? Oh, man!

And now I’m doing it just like you two.

 

 ** _Myka_** _._ This is no time to think about a game,

Pete! Jesus Christ!

 

 ** _Claudia_** _._                  Oh, Myka, don’t call on

Her brother! She hates that! Uh oh… did I

Say that out loud?

 

 ** _Steve_** _._                     This is the weirdest day

Of my entire life. And that includes

The day I told my parents I was gay,

and they bought me a football ice-cream cake.

 

 ** _Myka_** _._ A football? What?

 

 ** _Steve_** _._                                It was all that the store

Had in its freezer case. It was six in

The morning. On a Sunday. A big day

In January. Playoff season.

 

 ** _Myka_** _._                                    God.

 

 ** _Claudia_** _._ For pity’s sake! Her dad as well? Are you

Insane? I know she digs you, Myka, but

You sure do have a lot to learn about

This chick.

 

 _ **Leena**_.        I cannot take this anymore.

It causes great offense to verse of all

Kinds, yet particularly in this case,

Because poor Milton didn’t write a play!

****

Helena shouted, “I am slightly busy here vanquishing an arch-fiend! If you would be so kind as to not quibble with my mode of discourse!”

“That’s a relief,” said Pete. “I thought we were going to be stuck talking like that.”

Claudia tugged on Leena’s arm. “Shouldn’t we help?”

Leena shook her head. “She wants to do it alone; we should let her. We know they’re well-matched.”

Myka asked, “Would it help if we just… distracted him or something? So she could, I don’t know, knock him down?”

Leena said, with a strange urgency, “You don’t understand the nature of the fight. What you’re seeing, it’s just… I don’t know how to say it. It’s what they _think_ fighting is. It may be something else in a minute. Wait, I can show you what would happen if we all…”

She sang something then, but not a song, not a note, not all the notes or none of the notes, but _something_ , Myka was sure. And suddenly Leena, too, had wings; an armor-clad, lance-wielding Claudia sat on an enormous black horse; Pete wore military fatigues and held a machine gun, but he also had boxing gloves draped over one shoulder; Steve was in a football uniform, facing a tackling dummy; and Artie was seated at a chessboard on which one set of figures were… Soviet soldiers? Myka felt something heavy and familiar in her own hand—it was her épée.

Artie had said nothing up to this point, but now, as he stared at his chessmen, he yelped, “Metaphor!”

“Yes,” Leena said.

“So what Milton has Raphael say, about our human minds not being able to get it, is _true_?” Myka asked.

“Very nearly,” Leena said. “War in heaven is not the same as war here. They can throw trees at each other all day long; _I_ could throw trees; Pete could throw punches. It’s the _clash_ that matters. With these two, listen to what they _say_ to each other.”

Then her wings vanished, as did the horse, the chessmen, boxing gloves, all of it.

All except Myka’s épée.

“Interesting,” Leena now said. Then she hummed, a low pulse, as if a clarion had dropped in pitch.

That distracted Helena, who looked away from MacPherson, down at Myka. The presence of the épée seemed to confuse her, as did what happened next: Myka began to rise into the air.

“I’m… flying?” Myka could not make sense of the way she was leaving the ground—for she was leaving it, rising up, ascending to hover beside Helena (to take her rightful place, some part of her—possibly her soul—said). But what was she supposed to do with a sword, even a heavy one, against a tree-wielding devil?

“Well,” MacPherson said. He dropped the tree he was holding.

Okay, not tree-wielding. But still the devil.

Myka moved her blade tentatively, the barest beginning of an extension. The sword wasn’t weightless, and she wasn’t either; she realized that if she _thought_ her feet anchored, they were. If she _thought_ to move, she could.

“Well, indeed,” Helena said. She looked down at the assembled band, then at Myka. “They all respect my wishes. Why do you not?”

MacPherson tilted his head back and forth, appraising. “Perhaps she’s one of mine. Girl, what is your purpose?”

Helena snapped, “She is most certainly not one of yours. And do not call her ‘girl.’”

“Well,” MacPherson said again.

“This is where I belong,” Myka said. She moved in front of Helena and raised her blade.

“That is adorable,” MacPherson said. “Not to mention, incredibly _useful_.”

“If your design is to damage me by injuring her in any way,” Helena said, “then what I will do will make what my brother and I did to you in times past seem a mere rap on the knuckles.”

MacPherson shook his dark head. “Helena, Helena. You misunderstand me—as you always have. I would do harm only as a means of suasion. I do not wish to see you damaged. I wish to see you exalted.”

Helena laughed, an empty, tentative chuckle. “I beg your pardon?”

“You have never received your due, nor will you from that lot you call your family. But you can become great, far greater than your brother. By which I mean: join me.”

This time, Helena did not laugh.

TBC


	10. With a Little Luck

No, Helena didn’t laugh. And for a long moment, she didn’t do anything else, either. Myka just hung there, waiting, wanting to turn and see Helena’s face, to get some idea of what she could be thinking—though if events of the past while were to be believed, Myka could not possibly know what Helena was thinking; she didn’t even know if it was right to say that Helena “thought” in any sense Myka could understand—and yet Myka knew that if she turned, it would signal doubt. And if there was one thing Myka had _no_ doubt about, it was that right then, it was very important for Helena to believe that she had Myka’s full trust. So Myka waited. And she watched MacPherson’s face for some portent of what was to come next.

Finally, Helena said, “You mistake me. I am but a Dominion.”

At that, MacPherson rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes, that is the role you accepted. And by all accounts you have played it well, with only occasional… departures from the script, shall we say? But Helena, let us be clear. You are every bit your father’s daughter, and as such have the capacity for so very much more.” He paused. “How incredibly _bored_ you must be.”

Myka heard, or felt, something like hesitation in Helena’s usually strong voice as she said, “Perhaps you have forgotten in your time away: heaven does not arrange itself. And then there is the matter of ensuring that you and your ilk are kept in your place.”

MacPherson said, “Not doing a particularly bang-up job of that lately, are you and your heavenly host? I would say, my dear, that your betters are making a quite fundamental mistake, in that they do not see you for the true foundation that you are—or rather, that you could become. Renounce those fools, Helena. Join with me, and see what happens when all doors are opened to you.”

Helena coughed. “What difference would it make? Why would I want to play a role that _you_ envision for me? As you point out, I already play one.”

“But you would have no need for a role as such. To belabor the metaphor, it is time for you to direct the play! More concretely: it is time for you to rule! Why do you think your father and brother have done so much to keep you, and all your sisterly cohort, hidden from view? They know that you would make a far more attractive Messiah. It is time, Helena. _Your_ kingdom can come at last.”

His words were reverential, but his eyes were cold, calculating. Myka hoped beyond hope that Helena could see that that was so… because the kind of power he was talking about, and particularly the respect, no, the _deference_ that was its complement, were exactly what Helena seemed to crave. (“Get some therapy,” Myka had said. Yes. Good idea. Therapist: “So, Helena. Tell me about your home life. You say your father has a bit of a god complex?”) She wouldn’t be human if she weren’t tempted—okay, so she wasn’t human, but what drove her seemed at least similar, at least vaguely recognizable.

Myka felt Helena shift behind her. She realized that if she listened correctly, she could still hear the beat of Helena’s wings: where before, the throb had been steady and sure as a heart, now it was jumpy, erratic… indecisive?

****

Steve tried to focus on his breathing: one breath in, one breath out. One breath in, one breath out. Because it was almost, _almost_ too much to look up at the sky. Almost too much, even, to look at Leena, with her beatific face, her beatific face that Steve now understood was in actual fact beatific. Almost too much to look at Claudia, someone he’d thought was somehow like him, and know that she was in actual fact nothing like him, that she was some kind of… well, what? Some kind of supernatural warrior princess?

He thought he had it better than Artie, though. Artie really did look like he was going to pass out.

Pete just looked normal. A little quizzical, maybe, but oddly normal. He seemed to have no trouble watching the sky; it was almost like he saw what was happening up there as a complicated game of double Dutch, and he couldn’t figure out if he was supposed to jump in, and if so, when.

Then Pete looked at Steve. No, he was looking at something behind Steve, something that turned his face into a cartoon of surprise. And when Pete spoke, Steve understood why. “Mom?” he said.

Steve turned around, and yes, there was Professor Jane Lattimer. Steve wouldn’t have been astonished to find that she had wings, too, but to his relief, she just looked like her normal intimidating self. He had never been so glad to see someone so unnerving in his whole life.

“Pete,” she responded.

“Mom, what are you doing here?”

“Would you believe me if I told you I sensed a disturbance in the Force?”

Pete said, “Today I’d believe you if you told me you were a Starfleet captain and just transported down from your ship.” He stopped, considered. “Or you just escaped from prison. Or you’re helping run some super-secret organization— ”

“That’s quite enough of that,” said Professor Lattimer. “I think I prefer Starfleet, and son, you’re welcome to serve on my ship anytime. As is your friend Myka, who I see is taking on quite the role in this little play.”

“It’s not a play,” Leena said. Was she about to laugh? Or was she as serious as serious could be? Steve was starting to doubt not only his sanity, but his basic grasp on abilities like _how to see with eyes and hear with ears_.

“Believe me, dear, I know that,” Professor Lattimer said. “But I don’t think we’ve been introduced. Jane Lattimer.” She held out her hand to Leena.

Leena took Professor Lattimer’s hand in hers. She tilted her head back, as if to get a different view of the other woman; then she leaned forward and scrutinized her closely. She ended the performance by saying, “Oh. I see.”

“Yes,” said Professor Lattimer, clearly amused.

Steve was finding it hard to believe that everyone could be so blasé about what was happening in the sky—even though the tree-swinging seemed to have stopped for the time being. He heard Helena say, in a caricature of humility, “I am but a Dominion.”

If everybody else was going to act like it was a show, then fine. “What’s a Dominion?” he asked Claudia.

“The same as a Domination,” she said. She was still looking up, her eyes locked on Helena.

“That isn’t what I mean,” he said.

“I know. But Steve, listen to her. She might… what do we do if she does it?”

“Does what?”

“She doesn’t sound right, Steve. She doesn’t sound right. Leena, she doesn’t sound right. We have to do something! What can we do?”

Professor Lattimer said, “Little one, for the time being, we wait right here.”

That pulled Claudia’s attention back to earth. “Who are _you_? I’m pretty sure you’re not the boss of me, because of the bosses of me who are here, one’s up there, and one’s down here and is Leena, not you.”

Leena said, “Now might not be the time to sort that out. Besides, she’s right.”

“She’s _right_? She’s not right! How can I get in this thing? I can’t fly, but I can yell really loud.”

“Wait,” Professor Lattimer said. “She already has help, or have you not noticed the woman with the sword?”

Claudia said, “Myka seems great and all, but this is serious business. Just because they have, like, crushes on each other doesn’t mean _anything_. That’s just for a minute. H.G. needs _real_ help.”

Professor Lattimer and Leena both looked at Claudia indulgently. Claudia flung her hands at the sky. “Did you not just hear him? He’s talking about her and her sisterly cohort! That’s us, that’s us and Mrs. Frederic and everybody else! He knows that’s the way to get to her!”

Artie had sunk down, or collapsed, onto the ground. He slumped, crosslegged, as he said, “Sisterly cohort. So it really is all true. All of it. I thought it was just… I thought it was literary. A _literary_ puzzle. I should have known better. Even back when James and I… the stakes were so high. All those dissident authors, and he sold them out. He sold them out. I should have known that whatever he was involved in would be real, would have consequences. And look at me, making deals. Still willing to make deals. But, Jane, how could I have known?”

“Don’t worry, Artie,” she said. “This too shall pass. In any case, the… surprise will most likely last only so long. In the meantime, enjoy it! The times that we get any kind of real proof that what we believe to be true of a text is actually so? Few and far between!”

“You’re right,” Artie sighed.  “But at what cost?”

“We’ll measure costs in the aftermath,” Professor Lattimer said. “I think that what’s called for right now is, fittingly, a little faith.”

Steve wondered if Pete’s mom were a sorceress of some kind. Everyone seemed to have taken a mental step back: Artie sounded more composed, and he looked less like he might need CPR any second. Leena was almost as serene as usual. Steve himself found that he could breathe calmly, cleanly, in, out.

Claudia was the only one still straining against the idea of being soothed. “It’s what she wants!”

Steve knew he was missing something. Claudia was too upset, too overcome. An idea glimmered at him. He said, “Why don’t you want it too?”

“Want what?”

“For her to be in charge. I mean, _you_ obviously worship her. Don’t you want everybody to?”

The way she staggered… he should have just slapped her; it would have been kinder. “I can’t… I can’t want that. It’s… that would mean… “

Artie said, “That everything you thought you knew was wrong. That you had to start again.”

Claudia hung her head. “Yeah. Yeah.” Then her head snapped up. She looked better—like she was _thinking_. “I bet I could work it out. I don’t have quite enough hands-on yet, but I think in theory you could get the alignment right.”

Professor Lattimer said, “Little one. I don’t doubt that you can and will do amazing things, many of them in Helena’s service. But she cannot take this step simply because _he_ told her to. I assure you, you would not be able to get the alignment right if _he_ made it happen.”

Claudia wailed, “But then we’re right back where we started! How can I _help_ her?”

Leena told her, “Claudia, believe your eyes. She has help.”

“But Myka isn’t like us! What good can she do?”

Professor Lattimer said, “Helena’s brother would have a word or two to contribute to that topic. You might want to remember that.”

Steve’s breathing was losing a little of its regularity, because Pete’s mom was starting to sound even more scary than she did when she was explaining everything there was to know about Proust. He leaned over to Pete. “Your mom…” he said.

Pete shook his head. “Don’t ask me, man. I wasn’t kidding about the Starfleet thing—just the part about it not being surprising only _today_. There is no day it would be a surprise for my mom to hand me a plate of pancakes and casually drop that she’s, like, a reporter who solves crimes too. And by the way she’s also got a lecture in fifteen minutes in Helsinki so I need to drive my sister to school.” He looked at his mom, smiled, then looked up. “Doesn’t Myka look badass?”

And maybe Pete was a sorcerer too; in spite of it all, Steve felt better again. Because Myka _did_ look badass.

****

Myka was scared. Helena hadn’t been worried when this all started, she was sure, but everything sounded different now—her voice, her wings, the way her movements seemed not to rustle but to sputter.

“I have heard this proposition from you once before,” Helena said. “When you knew you were beaten. You suggested that I join you in hell, as it was clear even then that my brother would lead and I would bend to serve. Yet _you_ were to be the one to reign in hell.”

“And so I have. But if you join me, if you seize the day, _your_ day—if you are honest you can see that your brother’s influence wanes—then the time of your father and your brother will come to its natural end. They will at last be gone. And we will both have what we want.” He looked at Myka. “Exactly what we want. Indeed, you can have your little protector here close at hand, even as your father has his Michael.”

“Well,” Helena said, “perhaps not _precisely_ as.”

Myka could hear a laugh in Helena’s tone, and it poisoned the whole atmosphere; the laugh said that she and MacPherson were suddenly _sharing an understanding_. Myka hated that instinctively, and she hated even more that it was about her.

“In whatever way you wish, Helena,” MacPherson said. “Your choirs will be yours to determine, yours to use. And imagine the glorious revelation that will come to these wretched humans, these creations of your father, these beings over whom your brother has held so much sway. Imagine all that they will finally see, finally understand.”

Helena said, weakly but with yearning, “To step into the light…”

“Your _own_ light, your _rightful_ light.” He was looming again, just as he had in Artie’s office, when he knew he had the upper hand. He knew he was winning.

Myka wished she were holding a broadsword, so she could just _cleave_ him—but it wouldn’t help, it wouldn’t help! And neither would a tree, or a cannon, or Pete’s machine gun… but she had to do something. She was here for a reason; she was going to have to use reason. If, as Leena said, she was supposed to be comprehending this fight in terms of what they _said_ , then her job wasn’t to intervene with her épée or any other weapon she could touch. If she was going to protect Helena, she had to do it as part of the argument; she had to come up with something… “Wait,” she said to MacPherson. “What’s _your_ job going to be?”

“I beg your pardon, girl?”

“Your job. In Helena’s… kingdom. Where’ll you be?”

He seemed thrown by the question. “I shall be everywhere, of course. No longer consigned.”

Myka held her breath. She heard Helena’s wing-beat slow. Then it gathered strength, became the sound of power once again. Myka felt a sense of relief so profound that she worried she might forget how to stand—and to forget that, up here, seemed to be a prelude to disaster.

Helena said, with a hint of a laugh that was completely different, a hint that bound her to Myka, not to MacPherson, “But what about _my_ adversary?”

“Well, now I must beg _your_ pardon, Helena. What adversary? You and I will be allies!”

Helena made a humming noise. “Yes,” she said, “but don’t you imagine that there will be someone among the host who cannot abide _me_ , just as you could not abide my brother?”

“Helena,” MacPherson said, as if she were a child. “ _You_ cannot abide your brother.”

“Not the point,” Helena said briskly. “ _I_ didn’t march out in a fit of pique; _you_ did that.”

“It was not _pique_ ,” MacPherson said. “It was _revolt_!”

“Precisely,” Helena said.

“But I—”

“And rest assured, there will be yet another, should I throw my lot in with you. You are my brother’s antagonist, not mine. If _my_ time has come, it means _your_ time has passed. Consider that as you make your return to Pandemonium.” Helena moved forward, drawing close to Myka’s side.

MacPherson waved his hand. “Oh, I spend as little time there as possible. Dreary, drafty old palace. No, now I hold an endowed chair at a major university. I have tenure!”

“Talk about reigning in hell,” Myka said, sotto voce.

Helena smirked at her, and Myka knew then that Helena had won. She thought she might know something else, too: that everything might be fine. Better than fine—improved now, expanded, because now she was Helena’s _co-conspirator_. They had _worked together_.

Myka wasn’t religious. She’d given religion up, at least internally, after she tried at age six to explain to her Sunday school teacher why she felt bad for Judas, and as punishment was made to spend half an hour in exile in the hallway while the other kids enjoyed Easter bunny–shaped cookies. If she had had faith in anything until now, it had been the persistence of knowledge and its vastness, the transcendence of the truly great, the way the sublime could both encompass and elude. Other people found those things in religion; she’d sought them in art and science and literature. And she’d caught glimpses, traces: a piercing image, a chiming couplet, an elegant experiment. So Myka was not overcome by the idea that Helena was anyone’s daughter or sister. She was overcome by the idea that Helena was what she had been searching for.

And by the idea that she, Myka, was now part of it, that she had stepped into the stream—no, into the immeasurable _torrent_. She was standing beside Helena, and it was glorious. She could almost forget MacPherson; he had lost this round, and he seemed to know it. They, she and Helena, had made the winning argument. Myka was in love with all of it. Better yet, she knew that she could have faith in all of it.

Myka’s free hand moved, as if of its own accord, toward Helena, wanting a tactile affirmation of this amazing understanding. She jerked her hand back once she realized where it was headed, but Helena saw the twitch.

Judging from the hawkish aspect he assumed, MacPherson saw it too.

And Helena, whose voice had acquired an almost cheery tone again, whose movements had become almost idle again, said darkly, almost to herself, “The air is thick with things I must renounce.” She turned her head with an owl’s precision and swooped very close to MacPherson. She grabbed him by the lapels of the dark suit he wore. Myka had to strain to hear as Helena said in a concentrated murmur, “I refuse you.”

MacPherson was clearly finding it hard to speak, caught in her grip as he was, but he managed to rasp, “You have friends, as did your brother. Other offers may be made. Indeed, you clearly have a particular friend. And everyone has a price.”

“Listen carefully.” Her voice was a low scrape. “I refuse her as well. Do you understand me? She is not the way to me. There is no way to me. Your subterfuge will never again catch me unawares.”

He wrenched himself out of her hold. “You underestimate the value of deceit. Times change, Helena, and your family has always been reluctant to change with them. It _will_ be your downfall.”

“Not today,” Helena snarled.

“No, not today,” he agreed. He turned to Myka. “I don’t blame you one bit, girl. She _is_ quite attractive. More beautiful even than her brother. Alas, they both are so dedicated to resisting these… earthly entanglements. Any entanglements at all, actually. So _above it all_ , those two.” He looked Myka up and down. “You do have potential. Consider calling on me, should you have an hour of need.”

Myka said, trying to match Helena’s snarl, “I would never—”

“Ah, ah,” MacPherson interrupted. “You mortals… so certain. So absolute! It is a large part of your charm, the way you can claim to be so steadfast and yet still be so ready, so eager to be tempted. Isn’t that right, Helena?”

“I have had enough,” Helena said. “Would you care to be thrown back down to your rightful home?”

“I think not,” MacPherson said. He tipped a wing at her. “This match to you, my dear. Next time… we’ll see.”

He folded his wings around himself and began to whirl in the air, slowly at first, then picking up speed, and Myka said to Helena, “Is he supposed to look like a figure skater?”

“Oh, _fine_!” MacPherson said from inside his whirling shell of wing. There was a small pop, and he disappeared.

“Now that,” Helena said, “was pique.” She was preening, Myka realized, but there was an ostentation to it that seemed to be covering a very real relief.

A similar flamboyance characterized the way in which Helena got them back to the ground: she extended her hand to Myka, who really couldn’t help but take it; she spread her wings once, grandly, such that Myka felt a chill from the breeze the movement created; and then she sailed, glided, floated, flowed in descent, with Myka in her wake.

Myka wanted to feel as triumphant as Helena clearly did, as strong and _good_ as she had felt in the air. Then Professor Lattimer caught her eye…  it took Myka a second to think to wonder why Pete’s mom was here, and then to wonder why she was looking at Myka like she understood very clearly the unease that was tickling her mind. Her steady gaze seemed to combine sympathy with something like pity, and Myka’s vague sense of worry began to grow.

TBC


	11. Mull of Kintyre

Myka felt herself thrust to the side as Claudia, her face on fire with delight, immediately ran and planted herself at Helena’s side. “That was the best! Your brother is gonna go nuts!”

Helena gave her a small smile. “I suspect this is one of those incidents of which Charles will take pains to remain pointedly unaware.”

Pete enthused, “So, wow, was that true, all that about how if you became the Messiah or whatever, that you’d have a Satan of your own?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Helena said mildly. “Not the point. He believes himself quite adept at argumentation, and besting him is often a matter of making an argument that… flummoxes him. It was quite apt of Myka to interrupt him at the last; when he feels that he has lost, he does so love to wreak some kind of physical havoc, just to remind the assembled that he retains some power.”

“He has a hissy fit,” Pete supplied.

“Yes,” said Helena, apparently amused. “I’m sure that’s the appropriate term.”

Steve shook his head and murmured, “Satan has a hissy fit. I’m glad I’m a Buddhist.”

Claudia answered him with, “Where do you think koans came from? You saw him. Imagine what trying to figure out the sound of one hand clapping does to him.”

Myka wondered whether this was just… it. That what had happened had happened, and just like the encounter in Artie’s office, once its immediate effects wore off, everyone would just be fine. Back to normal, whatever that might mean at this point. Which made a certain amount of sense, she supposed, given that it must be the case that Helena, and presumably Leena and Claudia too, really had, pretty much literally, _seen it all_. It would be hard not to be blasé about just about everything, certainly once any immediate crisis had passed. That attitude was surely rubbing off on Pete and Steve, and Artie and Pete’s mom were so unmoved that they were deep in conversation, barely even sparing a glance for the angels that stood so near.

She decided she might as well give it a try. “Could I ask a question?” she said. “Actually, let me rephrase: may I ask the first of several questions?”

“Of course,” Helena said.

Did she sound remote? Preoccupied? Myka couldn’t quite place that tone, but… “Okay, first I just have to know, who’s… this is going to sound weird, but it’s… who’s your mother?”

Helena raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think that’s relevant. You have learned a great deal about my family today. Note that I am not inquiring about yours.”

“You don’t really need to, do you? Don’t you know everything? All that business about the smallest sparrow?”

“You mistake my abilities for those of my father. And in certain contexts, Charles. One of the perks, if you want to call it that, of the job. As for me, certain things happen in my presence, and I can perhaps encourage certain things to happen, but I am not a _mind reader_.”

As if mind reading were a parlor trick, and she would never stoop so low. Well, maybe that was true. “Okay, here’s another: why do you call your brother ‘Charles’?”

“It’s simply a nickname,” Helena said. “It irritates him.”

“His nickname is Charles?”

“Well, yes. Would you prefer it were something else?”

“It just doesn’t seem related to anything.”

“It isn’t.”

“That’s not usually how a nickname works. Speaking of nicknames, here’s question three: why does Claudia call you H.G.?”

Claudia piped up, “Because her dad’s name is God. Get it? Her name is Helena God!” She dissolved into giggles.

Leena sighed and said, “We’ve historically had trouble with names. For example, no one has any idea why we couldn’t call the arch-fiend ‘Lucifer’ anymore, but suddenly it had to be ‘Satan.’ Where that came from, I don’t know.”

Claudia said, “When Charlemagne came along, ‘Charles’ was _even funnier_. Because he was Charles the great, right, and Charles was just Charles. To H.G., anyway. The rest of us could never get away with calling him Charles. He got _so_ mad. Probably because H.G.’s the one who came up with it in the first place… they don’t so much get along.”

Myka said, “I’d sort of gathered that.”

Claudia said, warming to her subject, “She says he’s conceited.”

“Well,” Myka said, “he’s kind of a big deal, religion-wise. Maybe it’s justified?”

Claudia stiffened. “I don’t think I want to say any more about that.” She said to Helena, “I really didn’t mean to start this whole thing up, especially right now. Really. _Really_ really.”

Helena said, equally stiffly, “I am not angry. I am simply weary. Yes, Myka, he is a big deal. He is the Son. Everything is his.”

Myka said, “But was there any chance that you would ever—”

“As I said, he is the Son. And the estate was entailed, as it were, so here we are.” She shrugged. “I was allowed my choice of choirs.”

So that really was how it was going to be. “Remote” and “preoccupied” didn’t even begin to cover the _absence_ in Helena’s voice. After what had just happened… after what they had just done… why would Helena retreat like this? What was… and then Myka said, out loud, “Oh my god.” Then she dropped her épée and slapped her hand over her mouth. “Which I can never say again,” she mumbled out.

“Are you okay?” Pete asked. He sounded like he was asking if she had maybe tripped over a crack on the sidewalk.

“No,” she said, “I am not okay. Because—”

Helena interrupted, “Who is conversing with your Mr. Nielsen?”

Pete said, “That’s my mom! Come on, Helena, you have to meet her.” He moved like he was about to grab Helena’s hand and start dragging her, but he seemed to rethink at the last second. He tried to save it by going for a high five, but that went wrong too; Helena didn’t have a clue what he was doing, so she didn’t raise a hand, and Pete ended the performance by crashing into her wing and then down to the grass. Helena looked like she was about to have a MacPhersonesque hissy fit, and Myka was unreasonably pleased, and unreasonably sad to be pleased, that she herself was not the cause of it.

The ruckus caught Professor Lattimer’s attention. She strode to her sprawled son and shook her head. “Oh, Pete,” she said.

“Anyway,” Pete said from the ground, “this is my mom. Mom, this is Helena. Helena, this is my mom, Professor Jane Lattimer.”

Helena took Professor Lattimer’s outstretched hand. She did the head-cock, the squint, then said, “I don’t quite… have we met?”

“Do you know,” Professor Lattimer said conversationally, “what my family name is?”

“Presumably not Lattimer,” Helena said.

“No. I took my husband’s name. My maiden name is Zadki.”

Helena’s mouth fell open. Myka reached over and closed it with a gentle finger on Helena’s chin: a small intimacy that she desperately needed. Yet Helena didn’t even seem to notice; she began squinting still harder. “But you… you yourself are not…”

“No,” Professor Lattimer said. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not in the family business.”

Myka said, because she figured she might as well, “So you aren’t an angel, but you’re… related to one? One that Helena knows? But wait, I guess Helena knows all of them, don’t you?”

“In a sense, I do. But yes, if I am understanding Professor Lattimer correctly, she is of the family of Zadkiel, one of my father’s most trusted. He safeguards many things: mercy, memory…”

“Oh,” Myka said. “Hence the Proust.”

“Hence the Proust,” Professor Lattimer affirmed.

“And your son,” Helena said. “I see it now. A great deal of history, shall we say, behind his name, is there not? Does he know?”

“Pete? Oh, my, no. We’ll see, as time goes on, what will work best for him.”

“But he already exhibits several qualities. And that is why he is here, correct? You saw that something was likely to happen: you saw it before any of us.”

“Not any. Not before MacPherson, if that’s what we’re calling him now. He knew it would come to this, and he knew it would be you.”

“He _wanted_ it to be me. I’m not sure he _knew_ … but I suspect he would have drawn me out in any case.”

“Well, you _are_ his best bet, _if_ his sole goal were in fact the demise of your father and brother. Of course, that would require him to get past his own vanity, which I doubt he ever will. And yet he seems to know that reopening the books, as it were, could at this point work in his favor. Be careful, Helena. When doctrines become porous…”

Pete was sitting cross-legged on the ground now, watching the volleys above him. He didn’t seem at all surprised by any of it. But if his mom said he didn’t know, if he was just finding this out… or maybe he wasn’t just finding this out? Maybe he’d somehow figured out that his mom was part of some angel royal family? If he had, he was really good at keeping it under wraps, and that thought made Myka crazy. He could have spared her so much of this if he’d just _said_. If he’d just _warned_ her… and now she wanted to have been spared, because she knew, she knew from Helena’s tone, she knew from the way Leena was fidgeting, the way Claudia exuded unhappiness as she gazed at Steve… she knew that they were leaving. That they were leaving now. That Helena’s refusal of her, whatever that meant, was real; that no matter what Myka had been to Helena, for whatever brief moment she had been that—and she _had_ —it was ending. Maybe it had ended in that instant when MacPherson gave up, for that was the instant Myka had ceased to be useful to Helena.

Pete had been right… Helena had swooped in, and she was going to swoop right back out again. Though how they were all supposed to just go on about their lives after this, Myka could not begin to ideate.

She sat down next to Pete. “So this is the kids’ table,” she said bitterly. “How did you keep all this a secret?”

“Keep what a secret?”

“This whole ‘my mom’s an angel’s cousin’ thing. This whole ‘all that stuff we’re looking for in _Paradise Lost_ , I already basically know it’ thing.”

“Are you kidding? I didn’t know any of this. I gotta admit, it’s blowing my mind in a way I really didn’t think was possible. And you! Dude, with the flying and the sword and the winning argument! If there’s anybody who I thought knew all about it, right then, it was you. I didn’t see any of the rest of us getting yanked up in the sky to play left tackle.”

“Play left tackle?”

Pete nodded. “You were protecting her blind side, Mykes.”

Myka snorted. “Fat lot of good it did me.”

“Might not have done _you_ a lot of good. Sure helped _her_.”

“I don’t think that’s really going to matter much.”

Pete looked up at Helena. “I dunno, Mykes. It takes her a while, but eventually she kicks in.”

As if in response, Helena looked down at the two of them. Myka tried to hold back the sob that instantly gathered in her throat and pushed at the roof of her mouth… because the thick estrangement she felt at that moment, both from Helena and from whatever their connection had been, was made of ice.

“This is it,” she said to Pete.

“It what?”

Professor Lattimer said, “She means they’re going. Stand up, son.”

Myka and Pete both scrambled up. Pete said to his mom, “Is this gonna make things weird at home?”

“I assure you,” she said, “this will not make things weird at home. Because nothing is going to change.”

Pete grinned. “I might be a lot more interested in your ‘work’ now, Mom.”

Professor Lattimer shook her head. “No, I don’t think you will. You aren’t going to remember any of this.”

“What?” Pete and Myka both said.

Leena said, “It really wouldn’t be an efficient use of resources to have everyone going on about angels.”

Steve said, “Everyone does go on about angels. There’s like a whole industry of angel stuff. With TV shows and all.”

Claudia reached up—it was a long reach—and patted Steve gently on the head. “And I’m sure they get everything right,” she said.

“Don’t pat me on the head,” Steve grumbled.

Artie, who Myka noted had been observing the scene closely, said, “If what Jane’s been telling me is true, it’s a matter of… managing information. Although I have to say, the idea of being back at square one is more than a little depressing. And I don’t want to be duped by James again.”

“Hey,” Myka said, “why can Artie remember MacPherson? Why didn’t he forget about before, with the Soviets?”

Helena looked imperial.. Aloof. She explained, once again as if to a child, “He is no longer an angel. Things work differently among the fallen.”

“Well,” Myka said, “ _sorry_ I didn’t know that already.”

“No need to apologize,” Helena said. “You are a lesser creature.”

Myka tried to laugh. “Thanks,” she said. “I’m glad to have that confirmed. I’m glad to know that I was just good for one thing. Well, maybe two, there for a second, but you clearly decided you don’t need me for _that_.”

Helena drew herself up. “Do not be _naïve_. Surely you can imagine how many have come before you. Surely you can see that you are no different from any of them—certainly for _that_.”

“Okay,” Myka said, because it was all she could gulp out. “Okay.”

Leena seized Helena’s arm. “Helena, do not talk to her like that! You _know_ what she is!”

Pete said, “Uh… what is she?” Like the answer was going to be “a werewolf” or “an alien.”

Leena said, urgently, “She’s a _prophet_!”

Myka said, “I beg your pardon?”

Leena smiled. “You’re going to remember. That’s what prophets do.”

Myka felt… blank. “I don’t actually know a lot about this,” she said, “but I was under the impression that prophets _prophesy_. As in, tell you what’s going to happen. As opposed to what _did_ happen.”

Professor Lattimer said, “Prophets are spokespeople. And in order to suggest what _will_ happen, prophets must know what _did_ happen. Consider Elijah. Consider Isaiah.”

Myka said, “I would really rather not.”

Pete said, “So we’re all gonna forget, but Myka remembers? What’s the point of forgetting, if she can just, like, fill us in?”

His mother sighed. “She can’t fill you in until the right time, Pete. You won’t believe her.”

Myka wanted to sit down again. Just sit down and never stand back up. “It’s really not okay,” she said to Helena. “It’s not okay at all, for you to say those things to me. You said we would talk about it; you said there would be time. Did you just say that to put me off? Because to say… to say that things would be welcome, but now, to be like this? And after how I helped you? Because I know I helped you! I don’t care who you are. It’s not okay.”

That would have made Helena angry, before. Now she gave that indulgent smile and said, “Your opinion is of no consequence.”

“Stop it, Helena,” Leena warned.

“Very well,” Helena shrugged. “Let us go.” She turned her back on Myka and began walking away, across the green grass. Her wings obscured most of her body, but not her head, not her hair, and just the simple whisper of its movement drew Myka as much as it ever had. Every molecule of Myka that knew how to want wanted to call to Helena, to make her turn around, make her see, make her talk, make her act like… a person? Not even that. Just herself. Act like herself. There was a self there; that was what Myka had responded to and believed in. And this was not it.

Leena said, “I’m sorry, Myka.” Then she, too, turned, following Helena’s path.

Claudia hugged Steve. “I’ll miss you a lot,” she said. “Baseball is better than football, I just know it.” She looked briefly at Myka but didn’t say anything as she hurried to follow the other two.

And then they were gone.

***

Myka had thought she knew everything there was to know about being alone. She had spent most of her childhood alone: reading, dreaming, feeling like an exile. Different from her parents, her sister, her classmates; isolated because of that difference.

But there were no words for this isolation, no words for this kind of difference. When the initial shock wore off, she tried, in defiance of Professor Lattimer, to remind Pete of what had happened. Angels, she said; _Helena_ , she said. Her story confused him, angered him: “What are you trying to say, Myka? Why are you telling me about this weird dream you had?” And she tried to say that it wasn’t a dream, that it really happened, but his frustration with her grew. “Now you’re making me think you’re crazy, and if you’re crazy I’ll have to do something about it.” He wasn’t joking; he said it like he really would have her put away. For her own good.

She next tried to approach it in a roundabout way: “Have you ever noticed how many pop songs are about angels?” she asked him.

“Yeah,” Pete said.

She continued, craftily, “Because, you know, when they said that all the songs make sense, I never thought that meant _literally_ make sense.”

“Of course that’s what it means. Like with my ex, Amanda. She was totally an angel, and I messed it up.”

“Wait, you have an ex?”

“Everybody has an ex. You’ve got that Sam person.”

“Sam isn’t my ex. Sam was… I don’t even know what.”

“Okay, how about that guy in high school you told me about? Burt Smelter?”

“Kurt Smoller. You have an ex named Amanda?”

“Yeah. And she’s really my ex, as in, my ex-wife.”

“You have an ex-wife? How did that happen?”

“First we got married, then we got divorced.”

“I gathered that part.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m stalling. It was when I was in the Marines. Long story short: we were stationed together, it was great, then it wasn’t great, and it was all my fault. Sent me to AA, then back to school. Well, the school part was mostly because of my mom. She said if I was gonna mope around, I might as well do it in grad school, because at least I wouldn’t stand out. Hey, speaking of my mom, did you and she have some literary-theory fight? Because you were both really squirrely around each other when she was here last month.”

Professor Lattimer had been very clear that Myka would not, could not, have her help. That Myka would have to do this alone. Until it was time.

And so as the days passed, the thought _is it time yet?_ rose and fell within her. When it rose, when the answer was clearly “no,” that thought would be followed by an increasingly deafening “I can’t do this.”

Days became weeks, then months. Pete told her, with escalating frequency, “I really think you need to eat some cookies.”

To mollify him, she accepted a mini-Oreo as they graded final Masterpieces papers. The expression on his face as she ate it suggested that her willingness to do so didn’t appease him—if anything, it worried him more.

“Are you getting enough sleep?” he asked, and the question made her laugh, because sleeping was infinitely worse than being awake: ever since she was a little girl, Myka had dreamed about being able to fly. Even before she really understood what flying was. She had dreamed not of having wings, but of simply flying, almost swimming through air—not powerfully, like Superman, but just… moving. Moving like Myka. But in the sky.

She had thought, when she had those dreams, that that must be what heaven was like: being up in the sky, going wherever you wanted to go, moving the way you wanted to move.

Now, on the rare occasions when she slept, Myka still dreamed about flying. But she knew that that wasn’t heaven at all. Heaven wasn’t leisurely; heaven was strong and purposeful. Heaven argued with Myka, glowered at her with fierce, dark eyes. Flying was a pale imitation.

Just like Myka herself was a pale imitation—of what she had been before, yes, but also, of what she wanted to be.

If she felt like this after three months, she could not imagine how to face three years. Three decades. Any more time than this, in fact. She could not face it. And yet she read less, ate less, slept less; all she had was empty time.

She began to think about what painkillers had done to her. She thought about need. She thought very seriously about need, and the hours that occasioned it. And how they would seemingly never, ever stop.

****

Upon their return, Helena took up residence upon Mrs. Frederic’s symbolic furniture, as she had so often done in the past.

Claudia and Leena made the occasional pilgrimage to see her, Claudia attempting to attract her interest with some problem of alignment, Leena telling tales of various new inhabitants of nirvanas and heavens. In the past, such would have sufficed, and Helena would have allowed herself to be drawn out, eventually to resume her customary droll, if disaffected, aspect.

Now, however, she was, quite literally, preoccupied. Claudia ran headlong into the preoccupation when she offhandedly said that Helena should “get it out of her system.” There was no doubt about the “it” she was referring to.

“No,” Helena snarled. “How _dare_ you suggest that.”

“ _Sorry_. Come on, H.G., how was I supposed to know this was different? I mean, her dreams are like anybody else’s, aren’t they?”

Leena said, “To Helena, nothing about her is like anybody else. Isn’t that so, Helena?”

Helena did not answer. She could barely allow herself to think such a thing; to say it aloud would be a catastrophe.

Helena could feel, as a still-hot brand, each place on her body that Myka had touched: the brush against her arm, that first time; her shoulder, against which Myka had leaned; her forearm, by which Myka had pulled her down, and her hand, by which Myka had pulled her up; her lips, of course, which burned and burned with want and absence; her wings, which she could hardly bear to extend—they reached out for the stroke of fingers that would never come. And last, yet almost the strongest, because she had had to pretend it did not exist: just beneath her chin, that nudge of her jaw, when she had wanted nothing more than to grab Myka’s hand (for her presumption), capture Myka’s hand and mouth it, bite it, consume it. All this she had resisted. All this she still resisted. And her resources for doing so were slowly—yes, slowly, but very very steadily—being depleted.

Time moved slowly, as it always did. After a particularly interminable stretch, Helena began expecting Mrs. Frederic to wheel in and admonish her once again for her indolence… but instead, her brother appeared. He wore the dark skin that had attired him as a mortal, but his hair was the long, white mane of an old man. They had always resembled each other, and now she found herself looking into a negative mirror. She suspected he intended to disorient her. “You certainly had an effect,” he said by way of greeting.

Helena gathered herself as best she could. She said, grandly, “Delightful to see you as well. And you’re quite _welcome_ , by the way.”

“And are continuing to have one,” he went on, as if she hadn’t spoken. Well, that was Charles all over, wasn’t it. No perspective but his.

“I’m thrilled to have drawn your attention,” she said.

“No, you aren’t,” he said. “Helena, would you please do something?”

“What?”

“I don’t care. Something. Anything. Determine your next step, and take it. Because as it stands, you are a drag on this entire enterprise.”

“Please. As if anything I do—”

“Oh, stop it. Just because you decided you would for millennia sidestep your responsibilities to this family—”

“I beg your pardon? Sidestep my responsibilities? I have been an exemplary dominion!”

“Exemplary?” Her brother drew the word out, lingering, daring her to maintain that position.

“All right, I have perhaps shown less than flawless judgment at times. But you cannot say that I have sidestepped responsibility. That is simply untrue.”

“I said you have sidestepped responsibilities _to this family_.” He walked closer to her. “By which I mean, to Father, in the grandest sense.”

“Father has been very clear about where my responsibilities do and do not lie,” Helena spat.

Her brother sighed. “Helena, the fact that Father knows all does not mean he dictates all. We need not base our every action on his instruction. Think of recent events. Do you know what you did?”

“Yes,” Helena said. “I defeated the arch-fiend. Although I certainly didn’t expect you to take an interest.”

“My dear sister, it is a matter of initiative. I honestly thought you might come to this pass far sooner, yet you showed a strange, if churlish, willingness to bow under the yoke. But things happen in their time. The fiend was not entirely wrong, you see. Things are changing. And…” He sighed. “I may have improperly resisted such change, much as you resisted the prior situation as you perceived it.”

Helena, buying time, stood and shook out her wings. What could possibly be the motive behind such an admission? She supposed she could simply ask him… for what had she to lose, really? She had lost… no, she had _renounced_ that which she desired. What more could there be? And then she wondered, was that it? Had he come to take something else from her, or to somehow worsen this loss, and did he intend to build her up only to make the fall that much more devastating? “Why are you telling me this?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Perhaps a misguided attempt to follow the advice I have given others. Also…”

“Also what?”

“Also, no matter how much you may resent it, I am your brother. Do you think I have ever had any wish to see you like this?”

“I did not know you had any wish to see me at all.”

He ignored that for the poorly thrown dart it was. “And those around you, do you think they are pleased? Do you think they enjoy this austere turn your outlook has taken? And for what good reason?”

This argument, this level of provocation, was now reminding her, almost, of… no, she would not think that. Instead, she said, “But I have deprived the fiend of the way he would reach me! What else would the result be? Did you not see… what I refused? And you know exactly what I mean, or need I say the name Mary Magdalene?”

She had thought her aim better there, but he said, gently, “That was a different time, Helena. Have you not listened to a word I have said? Do you honestly think that emulating my behavior in such matters will produce positive results? I will say it one more time: the world is changing. At all levels. What is it that Father’s dear friend recommended? Be the change you wish to see in the world. Heed his words, Helena, I implore you. Your help is needed.”

“Charles,” Helena said, more from astonishment than because she had any idea of what she would say to him.

“Honestly, Helena? Still? It’s quite childish. I’ve often thought I should start calling you something in response, perhaps ‘Irene.’ It would cause such amusing confusion with Mrs. Frederic.”

“It has been pointed out to me that that is not how nicknames work.”

“Really? How do they work, then?”

“I’ve no idea. I left before I had a chance to find out.”

“Well then,” he said.

“Well then?”

He smiled at her in a way that he had not done since they were young together. “Find out.”

TBC


	12. My Love

In the past, that seemingly distant time _before_ , Myka had now and again found women in black pencil skirts attractive. So she wasn’t particularly surprised when, as her downcast eyes caught a glimpse of a woman’s legs below just such a garment, her pulse quickened slightly. It made her sigh and turn away. That kind of thing was very clearly not for her anymore, despite what Pete thought her agreeing to come to this party with him tonight signified. She’d said yes for two reasons: one, to make him be quiet—he’d phoned her excitedly the “very second” he himself had been invited, giving her all kinds of reasons to go, including “because it’s at the history chair’s house, and you _know_ she’s having that shindig catered!”—and two, to see, to really see, if there was any hope left in her. She hadn’t gone much of anywhere since the term ended, weeks ago, and she needed a test.

That her attention could be captured by a woman’s legs proved nothing; it was just a preprogrammed response to a stimulus, a reflex like picking up her phone when Pete called.

She looked down at other people’s legs and feet for a while, but while in the past she might have played “which department wears the best shoes” or “what percentage of party attendees merit the label ‘hipster’ based solely on their jeans,” now she was just… looking. The distance between her and the rest of the world was growing; she could feel it lengthening even as she stood and looked.

She saw the legs beneath the skirt again; it was the only such skirt she’d seen thus far. That she registered that as a fact, as an observation, did surprise her a little. The surprise made her look up.

“Pete,” she said weakly. He was behind her, talking to some girl. She tried to touch his arm, but she couldn’t figure out how to move her hand, and she ended up elbowing him. To his pained “Hey!” she responded, “Am I seeing things?”

“That depends. What things are you seeing?”

“I’m.” She had to start again. “Do you see that woman over there?”

“I see _more than one_ woman over there. In fact, I see lotsa women over there. This is a great party.”

“Pete,” Myka said again. “This is really, really important. Do you see a dark-haired woman in a blue sweater set and a black pencil skirt?”

“I don’t know what a sweater set is. Or a pencil skirt. But do I see a brunette wearing a blue sweater and a black skirt? Yeah, I see that. You think she’s hot? Want me to introduce you?”

Myka felt the world shift yet again. “You know her? You _know_ her?”

“Not real well, but I met her, actually this afternoon, because I go places and do things, unlike some people whose names rhyme with… with ‘Myka,’ but spelled with a different first letter. She’s the new History hire—the reason for the party, duh.”

“How could you not tell me?”

“I did tell you. I told you, and I think this is me directly quoting me, that ‘you should come to this party because the new hire in History is really hot.’”

It wasn’t her. It couldn’t possibly be her. Myka thought she must be having some kind of hallucination brought on by loneliness and depression. That seemed really likely. But if she didn’t find out for sure… because the way her heart had leapt at that first sight of this woman who couldn’t possibly be Helena but looked so very much like her… because if that was how she was going to keep feeling… but she had to take this a step at a time. “Please introduce us,” she said. “Please.” She didn’t care if he heard the desperation; this was the endgame.

“Awesome!” he yelped. “Look at you, feelin’ good, gettin’ in the game!” He half-dragged her behind him across the room and planted himself right next to the woman. Up close, the similarity was even more uncanny. Myka was out of her line of sight, so she could raise an unobserved hand as if to touch her, as if she might just be able to touch her and find out if she was real, if any of the situation could possibly be real. The whole thing could have been the result of a seizure, or a stroke—the party, the woman, Pete knowing her, all of it—Myka’s brain firing back at her for all the neglect and abuse of the past few months.

“Earth to Myka,” Pete said. “I was just saying to our new history prof here—”

And then that new history prof turned fully to face Myka. And it was all there: the smile that was all the smiles, the perfume that was all the perfumes, the eyes that could be so harsh, so bleak, so passionate, so sharp. It was all so achingly familiar, and Myka had thought she would never, ever see any of it again.

It was all so achingly familiar… and Myka fainted.

As she came to, she heard Pete babbling, “Eyes moving, that’s good, oh man, she had a really rough end of term awhile ago, and she’s been kind of depressed, and she never goes anywhere, and I don’t think she’s eating real well, to tell you the truth…”

And a voice, and it might have been Helena’s voice, said, “Calm down, young man,” and then, softly, and it was absolutely Helena’s voice, “Myka, please wake up.”

Myka opened her eyes. She was propped on the history department chair’s living room sofa, Pete was waving his hands in front of her face like he was in the middle of some florid magic trick, and Helena, or this someone whom Myka’s brain had fashioned into Helena, was seated at her side. A few people were giving them worried glances, but Pete had clearly reassured everyone already about Myka’s “rough end of term.”

Said the facsimile to Pete, “Would you fetch her a glass of water, please,” and Pete scurried away.

Myka said, “Am I dreaming?”

The other woman said, “I would have no way of knowing that, would I?” She smiled and shrugged one shoulder awkwardly. Maybe that was just because she was seated at an odd angle… but maybe… “After all, I am not a _mind reader_.”

Myka’s head sagged backwards again, and Helena said, “Oh no, one faint each, that is quite sufficient.”

All Myka could come up with was “how…” and “why…” and “you…”

“I will explain everything,” Helena said. “But as your friend is returning, may I ask that you play along?”

“Play along with what?”

Pete handed Myka a red plastic cup of water. “You’d think classier, right? But no… there’s actually a pony keg in the kitchen, can you believe it? Business in the front, frat party in the back. So, Mykes, I see you and dock lake finally sort of met.”

Words weren’t making a lot of sense to Myka. “Dock lake?” she said weakly.

“Doc-tor E-mi-ly Lake,” he enunciated. “The new history prof. Sitting right next to you? Come on, I know you didn’t hit your head when you passed out, because I caught you.”

Myka said, “I think I need some air.”

Pete said, “That’s a great idea.” He grabbed Myka’s arm and started hauling her to her feet. “Maybe a walk around the block or something, breathe in and out—”

“No,” Helena interrupted firmly. “Please, allow me.”

“Wow,” Pete said.

Myka had just enough possession of her faculties to advise, weakly, “Watch it.”

“I just meant—”

“Don’t,” Myka said.

He relented. “Okay. If you’re okay, then it’s cool. You’re okay?”

“I have no idea,” Myka said, honestly. “But I would really _really_ like to find out.”

Pete gave her a halfhearted pat on the arm he’d just manhandled. “Just let me know when you want me to take you home.”

Myka smiled at that. “I will.” She looked at Helena. “I do need some air,” she said.

****

Three minutes later, they were on the history department chair’s shadowed back porch, breathing at each other in the warm South Dakota night.

“Are you really real?” Myka asked. At Helena’s nod, she said, “Can I touch you?”

“You should not have to ask me. After what I said to you, and the way in which I said it, I should have to ask you—I should be required to petition you, to beg your forgiveness. Which I do. And I do so… most humbly.”

“I don’t care,” Myka said. “I’ll care later, I know I will, but right now I’m just drunk on the idea of being able to touch you.”

“Then touch me.”

And Myka did: she touched Helena’s hair first, sliding her fingers through the ends that fell over her shoulders. “I’m going to faint again,” she said.

“Please don’t,” Helena said.

So Myka moved her hand from Helena’s hair to her face, tracing up the sweep of her cheekbone, down the length of her jaw. Helena’s eyes closed, and her head turned toward Myka’s palm; her lips sought that palm, and Myka felt vertigo come over her yet again. Yet just as suddenly, clarity returned, as Helena nudged Myka’s shirt sleeve up to kiss her pulse point, making Myka wish she had worn something sleeveless, just so there would be more skin for Helena to touch. Helena found skin anyway, leaning closer to put her mouth near Myka’s neck, tucking her head onto Myka’s shoulder, strangely suppliant. “I thought of being near you like this,” Helena said.

“You did?”

“Yes. When I could no longer defend against such thoughts.”

Myka couldn’t resist any longer. “I thought of being near you like _this_ ,” she said. She tilted her head down and kissed Helena, softly and then more strongly. She was pushing against Helena, and Helena was pushing against her, and Myka moved back—not away, just back—until she was pressed against the house’s rough brick exterior, and now the space between her body and Helena’s was less and less, and then nothing, and their legs were pressing closer, and Myka could feel that skirt begin to ride up Helena’s leg, just an inch, now just a bit more, and Myka’s hand was reaching down, just to help a little, but if this went on any longer, she wasn’t going to be able to keep from—“We have to stop,” she gasped.

“Why,” Helena said. She put her hand on Myka’s, holding it in place, right where Myka’s fingers were curling under the hem of her skirt.

“Because…” and she forgot for a second, because of the press of Helena’s hand on hers, and where her own hand was, and where Helena’s mouth had just been, and it was overwhelming, and she hadn’t slept in days, and if she could just stay in this dream, now…

Helena yielded. “I know,” she said. “I will say that if I were not intending to be here for some time, I would care very little for such concerns. But as it is…”

“Intending to be here for some time,” Myka repeated, and then it dawned on her. “You really _are_ the new History hire.”

“Yes,” Helena said. “As you might imagine, I know two or three things about history.” She kissed Myka again, hard, an almost businesslike swipe of lips and tongue: thorough, efficient, effective. She stepped back and turned to the side, bending down just a bit. She was adjusting her skirt. And that was Myka’s complete undoing.

****

An exchange of texts:

_I’m going home now._

       where r u never mind i c u wait what

_Yes, with her. It’s fine. Better than fine._

       fast worker did u even rly faint sly dog

****

_Three hours later, Myka was asleep._

_Helena, however, was not. She lay beside Myka, emphatically awake, and emphatically aware of the body next to her._

_She had paid attention to bodies before, of course. She had taken pleasure from, and given pleasure to, many bodies. But she had not thought to care for them. A detail here or there might have caught her attention for a moment—a flexion of muscle, a fall of hair, the lank of a thigh—but these were isolated attractions, fragments of beauty._

Once they had reached Myka’s home, that small attic space, Helena had found herself hesitant; she could not settle on a course of action. Should she explain what had happened? Should she apologize again? Should she simply fall to her knees before Myka and beg? She tried, without success, to sort through these possibilities, but as she looked at Myka for some sign, she noticed something. “Your clothes do not fit you well.”

Myka had shrugged. “I really don’t want to talk about my clothes. What about _your_ clothes? Where’s your coat?”

“The change was Claudia’s idea,” Helena told her. “To ‘shake things up,’ she said.”

Myka’s teeth showed as she laughed a little at that. “Mission accomplished.”

Helena said, “On the contrary, mission barely begun.” She brushed at her garments a bit, smoothing them. She saw that that drew Myka’s eyes to her legs.

Myka said, somewhat breathlessly, “I think you should wear that skirt every single day.”

“A short while ago, you seemed to think I should not wear it at all,” Helena had tried to tease. Myka just stared at her, and Helena was trapped, staring back.

For now that they did not have to stop, Helena had no idea how to start. Even this, which should have been most simple, this joining that had become inevitable… it seemed to become, suddenly, something not inevitable at all, something better left alone, for what if she and Charles had both been wrong and there were even now consequences gathering outside the door, darkening the windows of this tiny, perilous space?

It was Myka, of course, who rescued her once again.

—though it began terrifyingly, with Myka bursting without warning into a near catechization: “How did this happen? I knew you for only three days! How can you have made me want you so much that I might have… And then tonight, I might have put my hands on you, done that in public? How can you possibly be so much of everything to me? How can that have happened so quickly? I know you’ll always be beyond my understanding, but are you really just some metaphor for love?”

Helena could answer this. “All is metaphor. All. Of course I am. Of course you are. How else could I say, with honesty, that you as well are everything to me? But we are manifest too; we are here, now, physical. Do you doubt it?” She could prove this: she closed the distance between them and said, “Put your hands on me now.”

_Myka twitched in her sleep, her whole body rearranging. Was she dreaming? Helena imagined what would have happened if she had followed Claudia’s suggestion, if she had tried to rid herself of want by sating it stealthily. The idea had offended her then, but for the wrong reasons; then, she had taken it as both a comment on her own weakness and an insult to Myka’s autonomy. Now, Helena understood that it would have stolen the opportunity for this joy from both of them._

Had Helena expected a violent collision, a tempest in keeping with their beginning? Acts of power and precision? It was nothing like that; instead, all was slow sweetness, slow but not leisurely, increasing warmth and thickness, density in her eyes and ears until there was nothing else, nothing at all.

After, in the tranquility, when Helena could study Myka’s body undistracted by the pressure of need, she saw the protrusions of Myka’s iliac crests, her ribs, her clavicles. She understood something of the unanticipated slowness then; she understood why Myka’s clothes did not fit: “You are gaunt. You are weak. You need food,” she had said.  
  
“I need you.”

This statement should have increased Helena’s bliss; instead it cut her with shame. She sat up and turned away. “You _should not_ need me. This is all my fault.”

Myka said, quite gently, “Yes. It is your fault. Because you gave me a glimpse of how things could be, and then you took it away. That was cruel. Whatever your reasons, it felt like a punishment. For something I couldn’t help but do, which was to know what we were meant to be.”

And Helena bowed her head. Because it was so. “I thought it was best. I thought that the suffering it occasioned in me _showed_ that it was best. I thought that my enduring that suffering was proof… I thought myself Charles. I did not imagine that it was you and I who are alike.” Helena turned back to Myka, awed. “That you could bear it… you are so much stronger than I dared imagine or hope.”

“I almost didn’t,” Myka said. “I almost couldn’t do it. If you hadn’t been there tonight, I don’t know what would have happened.”

Helena felt a chill. “I was wrong. I had no idea how wrong.”

“And I didn’t have any way to fix it. Only to do something awful in response to it.”

Helena began to shake with small tremors, rippled hardenings of her spine, her shoulder, her jaw. “I will thank Charles when next I see him,” she said. “I will thank Mrs. Frederic, and Leena, and Claudia. Once I resolved to return, they removed every obstacle from my path. And I will thank Pete, for bringing you to that party. I had thought not to rush you, but I will thank all of them for conspiring to put the two of us together, this night.”

“Together, this night,” Myka repeated. She reached for Helena again. Helena stopped shaking.

_Myka slept on her stomach. A sheet covered only her legs, and Helena moved a hand to map the juttings of her too-prominent scapulae. When strengthened with more flesh, that long back would be beautifully suited for wings._

This time, after, Myka spoke first. “What happens now?”

“More of the same?” Helena ventured. She had to laugh at herself; she had not intended to sound so hopeful.

“That would be fine,” Myka said, “but what I meant was, what happens with this ‘you teach history’ thing?”

“I shall undertake to continue the work begun by your Mr. Nielsen, but in a historical context. Charles and I are in agreement: there is a need, and a way, to suggest a broader version of history, and to bring that broader understanding to bear upon the present.”

Myka blinked. Then she laughed. “Broader.”

“Hm?”

“A version of history that’s broader? Like, more broads?” At Helena’s uncomprehending head-shake, she laughed again. “The things you don’t know… I’ll explain it later.” She yawned. “That’s a surprise.”

“What is?”

“I feel like I could just fall asleep.”

“Then do,” Helena told her.

“But what if I wake up and you’re gone?”

Her childlike, anxious tone made Helena kiss her fiercely once again. “I will not be gone. I will not.”

Myka’s eyelids fluttered closed. She yawned again. “Okay,” she said. Then she opened her eyes, though the lids continued to droop as sleep gained on her. “But if you aren’t… I have to know… you have to tell me… what was new?”

Helena wished she could enfold herself and Myka together in her wings at that moment. She settled for smiling and whispering in Myka’s ear, “My love.”

_Now Myka slept peacefully on her back. Now Helena watched her sleep. Now the rise and fall of her ribcage reminded Helena of the sure, steady beat of wings. Now Helena slept too._

****

Three days later, they were saying goodbye at the tiny Sioux Falls airport, where Helena was about to board a plane that would take her to, of all people, Jane Lattimer. “I still don’t get why you have to see Pete’s mom,” Myka complained. “Why can’t you just stay here with me?”

“She and I need to speak about what the future is likely to entail. Also, she is uniquely qualified to instruct me in things I will need to know in order to function here,” Helena said.

“I can tell you anything you need to know,” Myka said.

“I suspect that if I stay here, talking will be very low on the list of things we are likely to do.”

“That’s probably true,” Myka conceded, feeling her face turn red. She focused on a point in the distance over Helena’s head and murmured, “Talking has really taken a backseat to that, these past few days.” Then she grinned and looked back down at Helena. “To that, and to you making me peanut-butter sandwiches. Which is really very nice, but I don’t think I ever want to see one ever again.”

“One,” Helena said, “you have very little variety in your pantry. Two, I am not a cook. Sandwiches, however, I can construct with some degree of reliability. And three, peanut butter is _delicious_.”

“You sound like Claudia,” Myka said affectionately.

“Incidentally, in mixed company, you should not mention her. Or Leena. People will find it confusing, just as if you were to call me ‘Helena.’ Jane has made that quite clear.”

“I’m really not sure I can call you ‘Emily.’” Myka said.

“You don’t have to, not in private.”

“But what if I slip and say ‘Helena’ in public?”

“I imagine the occasional slip would not cause a problem. We can just say it’s my nickname.”

Myka sighed. “Leena wasn’t kidding, was she? One more time: that is not how nicknames work.”

Helena squinted. Myka hadn’t seen her do that in some time; it was comforting. “Yes, I was to find out: how, exactly, do they work?”

Myka supposed she should have seen the need for this tutorial coming and prepped accordingly. “Um… sometimes they have something to do with what a person looks like. This is a dorky example, but I might call you ‘Wings,’ because you have them.”

Helena squinted harder. “But that isn’t a _name_.”

“I see that’s confusing for you. How about, okay, sometimes it’s when you shorten a name, like ‘Helena’ would become… well, I guess there aren’t any good ways to shorten it. Wait, hey, I’ve got it, like Pete calls me ‘Mykes’! Do you get it now?”

Helena, who’d begun to look hopeful, deflated a bit. “Oh. I assumed that was because he found articulating two syllables too great an exertion.”

Myka thought about that. “Okay, yes, it sort of is, but… you know what? Never mind.”

It was Helena’s turn to sigh. “Charles is going to be tremendously disappointed.”

****

Three weeks later, they were moving into a rented house. Together. (“You might be taking things a little fast with this lady, Mykes,” Pete had said when she first told him; then, as she started to object, “but if you’d let me finish: this place is way nicer than yours. It has actual rooms. Plus, the fridge is a lot bigger. Good call! If you break up, you should totally kick her out and keep it.”)

Pete and his basketball buddies were going to show up _any minute_ to help haul Myka’s books from her apartment to the house. _Any minute_. And Myka had already had just about enough of Pete walking in on them—in the office twice, in the library once—and then making jokes about how he’d have to gouge his eyes out, or how he wanted to film them and put it on YouTube “or, even better idea, some paid porn site. Because trust me, people would cough up all the cash. I’d be a zillionaire and never have to grade another paper, and I could tell everybody with tenure to _suck it_. Except my mom, because she’d kill me. And maybe Artie, because he’s halfway decent sometimes.”

“And, um, Emily,” Myka had said.

“Sorry, right. I don’t think she’s really tough enough to kill me, but I’m sure you’d step in and get all butch on her behalf. And it’d be a tie between you and my mom, how creative the new and different _way_ to kill me you’d come up with would be.”

So there was absolutely no way that Myka was going to let Helena keep putting her hands and her lips where she was putting them. She batted at those hands, pretty ineffectively, and said, “Seriously, a rain check, please?”

Helena pouted. “Think on this,” she said, her mouth still quite close to Myka’s skin, “if you owned no books, we could be making love right now.”

“No, we couldn’t.”

“Are books somehow essential to the act in ways of which I am not aware? Or are you in need of further study in this arena?”

“We wouldn’t have _met_ if I didn’t love books so much.”

Helena smiled. “And yet, my dear, I am fairly certain you have heard of _libraries_. Large buildings where reading material is collected and held? Your kind have had them for simply ages. A lovely invention.”

“Stop it. You are not going to sweet-talk me into bed by whispering in my ear about libraries.”

“Oh, but I am.”

They were both right: Helena didn’t sweet-talk her into _bed_ , per se, but there might have been a kitchen counter involved, and Pete might have appeared at a certain point and yelled “MY EYES!” followed with a mutter of “thank god I made the guys wait with the cars” that escalated into “why do you say the door will be open so come on in is it just so you can DO THIS TO ME AGAIN DO YOU GET DOUBLE GAY POINTS FOR THIS?!?”

Helena, of course, said yes.

***

Three months later, on a surprisingly warm late-autumn day, Pete was not-quite napping on a bench on the quad. Long classes, tons of reading, articles, papers, just ate a nice big burrito at the place… suddenly, though, he was completely not napping: he thought he heard a _whump_ , followed by a kind of girly upset mumble, and his eyes popped open.

“Pete!” a girl shrieked from the ground in front of the bench. She had red hair. With a green stripe in it.

“Uh… do we know each other?” Pete asked.

“We did,” the girl said, “and we’re about to know each other again. Have you talked to your mom lately?”

“My mom? What?”

And then his mother walked up and sat down on the bench beside him. “I was just coming to do that, Claudia,” she said to the girl on the ground. “I think you should go and find your friend Steve. Remind him of… things. Collect Artie as well.”

Pete looked at Claudia. He looked at his mother. “Waitaminute,” he said. “That whole thing, that whole _thing_ , with the wings and Claudia and Leena and Steve and Myka in the air… and _Helena_! Who isn’t Emily Lake at all! Ow, my brain hurts.”

“It’ll pass,” his mother assured him. “In the meantime, I have a few old family stories to tell you. To help you understand what you’re going to be asked to do from time to time.”

***

Mrs. Frederic wheeled contemplatively. She resounded to Leena, “Can this foolishness possibly work as they intend?”

They had discreetly attended the meeting of Helena’s conclave—as discreetly as Mrs. Frederic could attend anything. A spate of UFO sightings occurred in South Dakota that night.

Leena hummed, searching for resonance. “It sounds right,” she said. “And I doubt any of the host would have an interest in talking both Helena and her brother out of it.”

Mrs. Frederic sighed, a great cyclone of a sigh. “It has been so long since they were in accord. I did not believe he would encourage her, in the end, but… he wishes to see her happy.”

“I knew early on,” Leena said, “that Helena was high spirits there, in a way I had never sensed before. But I had no idea how happy she could become.” Helena and Myka had not even been near each other for most of the evening, yet the group’s energy flowed through and around them. And when they would touch—when Myka passed by Helena’s chair and ran a gentle hand over Helena’s shoulders; when Helena tried to tease Myka by reenacting her aerial épée defense and instead fell into Myka’s lap—there was _power_.

“None of us knew how happy she could become,” Mrs. Frederic rumbled. “We must prepare ourselves.”

“For what?”

“For everything.”

For it is a truth universally acknowledged, that an overjoyed angel, too, is a dangerous angel.

END


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